James Corden’s latest public controversy didn’t go the way one might think.
On Sunday, the former “Late Late Show” host, 45, was photographed seemingly reprimanding an employee at British Airways after a turbulent trip from Faor, Portugal, to the UK – and other passengers rallied around him, insisting that he was in the right.
This is a change from his previous public skirmishes.
Corden has made headlines in the past for being “rude” to staff at Balthazar restaurant, leading to famed Big Apple restaurateur Keith McNally banning him from the downtown hotspot over his behavior.
Spice Girl Mel B has also referred to Corden as “the biggest d–head I’ve ever met.”
But, according to The Daily Mail, fellow passengers on Corden’s flight claim that the former talk show host was helpfully advocating for them all when the plane was forced to make an emergency stop in the Portuguese city after a mechanical problem.
Fellow passenger Vanessa 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 brace position and when we land if you’re able, please find your nearest emergency exit and vacate the plane.”
Per her account, passengers were told they no longer had to brace, but they still spent three hours on the tarmac in Lisbon before the plane was taken out of service.
Corden, who had to publicly apologize for his conduct at Balthazar after owner Keith McNally called him a “tiny cretin of a man” and “the most abusive customer to my Balthazar servers since the restaurant opened 25 years ago,” allegedly kept passengers entertained during this tedious ordeal, according to Vanessa.
“He walked up and down the aisles talking to people, and let everybody take a selfie with him,” she said.
She added, “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?’” she said, referring to the popular British sitcom.
“And he went ‘Do you really want to know?’ and I went ‘Yeah.’ He went, ‘I can’t tell you.’”
Vanessa claimed that Corden confronted a staff member after passengers vacated the plane in Lisbon, because the passengers were guided to the wrong line.
“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.’”
She defended his conduct where photos show Corden appearing to have a heated verbal confrontation with airline staffers.
“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,’” she said.
“James was a club flier 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,’” she claimed, adding that Corden “stood in the same queue as everybody else, doing the same things as everybody else did.”
The Post reached out to Corden for comment.
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