James Corden is once again embroiled in a public controversy. The 45-year-old former host of the “Late Late Show” was seen berating a British Airways employee after a turbulent flight from Faro, Portugal, to the U.K. on Sunday. Other passengers supported him, arguing that he was right.
Compared to his previous public controversies, this is a change. Famous Big Apple restaurateur Keith McNally banned Corden from popular downtown eatery Balthazar after he behaved “rudely” with the staff there. In addition, Spice Girl Mel B called Corden “the biggest d-head ever.”
However, according to the Daily Mail , other passengers on Corden’s plane claim the former talk show host was speaking kindly to everyone when the plane was forced to make an emergency landing in the Portuguese city due to a mechanical problem.
“Gather all of your belongings, take off your shoes, and please assume the brace position when the flight staff tells you to do so, and when we land, if you are able, please find your nearest emergency exit and vacate the plane,” fellow passenger Vanessa told Metro about the mid-flight incident.
They claim that although passengers were told they no longer needed to prepare, they were still made to wait at Lisbon airport for three hours before the plane was deboarded.
According to Vanessa, Corden kept the passengers entertained during this tiring trip. “He walked up and down the aisle talking to people and letting everyone take selfies with him,” she said.
“I joked, ‘Oh, if we’re all going to die. Can you tell us how the Gavin & Stacey Christmas special ends?'” he said, referring to the popular British sitcom.
“And he said ‘Do you really want to know?’ And I said ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘I can’t tell you.’”
How did James Corden voice the fellow passengers?
Vanessa revealed Corden questioned a staff member after passengers were sent to the wrong queue after disembarking from the plane in Lisbon.
“So then BA finally let us off the plane,” she recalled. “We were in the terminal and there was no BA staff member to be found. And they made us stand in immigration queues. And there was no one to tell us what was going on.”
He also shared some photos to justify Corden’s actions in which he is seen having a heated verbal argument with airline staff.
He said, “The people he’s talking to in that photo are our flight attendants. I saw them give the pilot a fist bump as he got off the plane, and say, ‘Thank you very much.'”
“James was holding a club flyer and he was standing there, saying ‘What about all these people with all these kids?’ Like that’s not acceptable to say. That’s not right,” she claimed, adding that Corden was “standing in the same line with everybody else, doing the same thing everybody else was doing.”
