James Corden vented his frustration at airport staff on Sunday, but onlookers insist the temperamental TV presenter was only voicing his opinion after enduring a nightmarish flight.
Corden, 45, was flanked by fellow passengers after landing in Lisbon, where he was seen confronting a British Airways employee during a turbulent trip to the UK from Faro in southeastern Portugal.
But those on the flight claim he was speaking for all of them after the plane was forced to make an emergency stop in the Portuguese city due to a technical fault.
It’s understood that the plane struggled to gain altitude as soon as it left the Algarve and circled for 45 minutes, never reaching altitude before announcing an emergency landing.
Vanessa, who was on the same flight with her mother and husband, told Metro of the mid-flight ordeal: ‘It was something along the lines of, “Gather your possessions as best you can, take off your shoes, and when you’re told to by the airplane staff, please adopt the brake position and when we land if you’re able, please find your nearest emergency exit and vacate the plane.
‘Basically, what had happened was the flaps on the airplane wing which are supposed to go down when you are in the air won’t go down, which meant that they wouldn’t be able to raise them on landing.’
Passengers were eventually told they would no longer have to assume the brake position, but spent three hours on the tarmac in Lisbon before the plane was finally taken out of service.
And Vanessa claims Corden – who once fell out with a New York restauranteur over his alleged treatment of waiting staff – kept passengers entertained by posing for selfies as they made their way back to the UK.
‘He walked up and down the aisles talking to people, and let everybody take a selfie with him,’ she said.
‘I made a joke and went, “Oh if we’re all going to die. You could tell us how does the Gavin & Stacey Christmas special end?” and he went “Do you really want to know?” and I went “Yeah.” He went, “I can’t tell you.”
‘Then he said, “but do you want to know what happened on the fishing trip?” and I was like “Yes! I do!” and he was like, “I can’t tell you that either.”‘
Vanessa confirmed the presenter confronted a staff member after passengers vacated the plane at Heathrow, but only because they were shepherded into the wrong queue.
‘So then BA finally let us off the plane,’ she recalled. ‘We’re in the terminal and there was not a member of BA staff to be found. And they put us in immigration queues. And there was just no one there telling us what was going on.’
‘The people he’s speaking to in that picture are the flight staff on our plane. I watched him fist bump the pilot as he got off the plane, he said, “Thank you very much.”‘
According to Vanessa the presenter was vexed because passengers had been directed towards the wrong queue, among them families with young children.
She said: ‘James was a club flyer and he stood there, and was like “What about all these people who’ve got all these kids with them?” like saying that’s not acceptable. It’s not right.’
Passengers were eventually given a flight to London at 9:30 the following morning and Corden was ‘stood in the same queue as everybody else, doing the same things as everybody else did.’
Corden has previously fallen foul of various public figures, among them Spice Girl Mel B – who branded him ‘the biggest d***head’ she’s met.
Naming her least favourite celebrities on a 2022 episode of The Big Narstie Show, she said: ‘So, there’s a few. James Corden, Geri Halliwell, Jessie J and me!’
Ricky Gervais has also been critical of Corden after the presenter used one of his 2018 stand-up jokes during a late Late Show monologue.
Gervais tweeted a clip from Corden’s show in which the host jokes about Twitter users getting angry about a poster in a town square about guitar lessons.
But Corden’s joke is directly repeating Gervais’ gag from his 2018 Netflix stand-up comedy gig Ricky Gervais: Humanity.
Gervais, retweeting a clip of Corden repeating his joke, said in a since deleted tweet: ‘The bit about the town square advert for guitar lessons is brilliant.’
The comedian said he deleted the original tweet because he ‘felt sorry for Corden’.
In 2022 Corden was branded a ‘tiny cretin of a man’ and banned by the furious owner of iconic New York Balthazar restaurant – who claimed was the ‘most abusive customer ever.’
Fiery restaurateur Keith McNally banned the former Late Late Show host from his restaurants because of his treatment of staff.
