JAMES WARD: I LIKE BORING THINGS

There is an interview with the footballer Vinnie Jones in the new issue of the Radio Times. In the interview, Jones complains that he no longer recognises the country he grew up in, as it is now “European”:

It’s not the country I grew up in. It’s a European country now. If someone blindfolded you and put you on a plane in LA, and you landed at Heathrow and they took it off, you wouldn’t have a clue where you were.

This is a rather odd thing to say. For one thing, you’d know you were in an airport because there would be loads of people standing by luggage carousels waiting for their suitcases.

All of the signs would be written in English and given the length of the flight, you might therefore assume you were somewhere in the UK. That would narrow it down. As Heathrow is the busiest airport in the country, that would be a sensible first guess.

The pilot would have made several announcements during the flight and would definitely have mentioned the destination.

It’s a moot point though really, because it’s very unlikely that you would have been able to get through passport control while blindfolded. They would most likely ask you to remove the blindfold, during which time you would probably be able to get a glimpse of the details on your boarding pass. I also think that attempting to pass through border control while blindfolded is likely to draw the attention of the guards and if anything would lead to quite intensive questioning during which the details of your flight are bound to be mentioned once or twice.

I don’t think I’d like to sit next to Vinnie Jones on a plane. The blindfold thing would be a bit weird enough, but this is not great either:

Vinnie Jones, the footballer turned actor, slapped a passenger in the face and threatened to murder the cabin crew during a drunken rampage in the first-class cabin of an airliner.

I don’t think we’d get on.