“Fucking idiot” Kim Kardashian (Jon Hamm’s words, not ours) applied her customary tact to a travel mishap recently after a flight from Terminal 5.
“Very disappointed in British Airways for opening my luggage
& taking some special items of mine!” she tweeted, no doubt undoing millions of BA’s PR pounds in fewer than 140 characters.
But nonchalantly using one well-tended fingernail to tap a blemish on to a brand is not the biggest crime committed against an airline by a celeb. What is it about travel that brings the worst out in this usually so publicly polished caste?
The list of celeb bad behaviour on planes is long, to say the least. Professional fuck-up Pete Doherty was busted with a needle on a BA plane in 2009 and found himself arrested in Geneva when it landed. Stroppy supermodel Naomi Campbell was arrested at Heathrow the year before, on suspicion of assaulting a police officer on a Boeing 747 over a lost bag. Alec Baldwin recently launched a tirade against American Airlines on Twitter after crew had the audacity to ask him to turn off his phone, and Joan Collins publicly criticised home secretary Theresa May because she had to queue for a bit at Terminal 5.
Perhaps most impressive is generously conked French actor Gerard Depardieu urinating on a City Jet carpet during a flight from Paris to Dublin. The Green Card star was refused entry to the lavatories as the seatbelt signs had been turned on for takeoff, so he pissed on the floor. The plane was grounded for two hours while staff cleaned up.
Travelling takes patience, flexibility, and the understanding that you are not the most important person on earth. No wonder this lot are hopeless at it.
