Travelling with children can be tough. And Vogue Williams had added drama on a flight back from Gibraltar on Friday when she realised she’d accidentally booked a seat away from Spencer and their three children: Theodore, three, Gigi, two and Otto, four months.
But to rectify the mistake, Vogue and Spencer asked a stranger to swap his seat and it did not go down well. 'I was sitting in an aisle of three and I had booked the wrong seat in the other aisle and that was my mistake,' she explained on their podcast. 'Spenny was like, “would you mind doing window instead of aisle so we can be all together?” and he's like "Yes Spencer, I would mind."
'We were just like, “oh, OK dude, that's OK,” and so anyway when he realised he was being an absolute t**t, he looked at me with a newborn baby and the two kids beside me, he was like "OK, fine, fine I'll do it.”’
Let’s be honest, aisle seat to window seat is a serious downgrade but Vogue was furious at the (presumably childless) stranger’s unwillingness to help them out. ‘Literally, the airhostess came down and I was like, "have you got another aisle seat for this f***ing particular piece of s***e over here?" He was awful,’ she said. 'I feel like when people have kids, it is a nightmare on flights. If you can in any way help them out, do.'
Elaborating on her travel preferences, Vogue explained she only likes to sit at the front of planes and never wants to be in a middle seat. 'It sounds diva-ish but I don't want to be right at the back of the plane because I'm usually carrying hand luggage, a baby and a buggy,’ she said. 'I want to be at the front of the plane and I want a window, preferably a window seat so I can go to sleep with the baby in my arm or an aisle seat if there's nothing free.'
Previously, on a different flight, a woman had let Vogue have her seat because she was with her baby. 'This woman comes along, the owner of the aisle seat, and she said, no no, you've got a baby, I'll sit in the middle,’ Vogue recalled. ‘I was like, you are an angel sent from God, you are so kind.'
Vogue and Spencer’s fans were unimpressed by their belief that the childless should help them and the internet has fought back ferociously in response to the anecdote. ‘How obnoxious, so that man did not have the right to sit in the seat he chose because some couple who could not be bothered to select the correct seats get on with a lot of screaming kids,’ wrote one critic. ‘Solidarity with that utterly luckless bloke in the plane seat Vogue Williams should’ve booked added another.
‘The way you handled the plane situation was out of order. You made the mistake as you admitted. That man was not obliged to move. Did you expect the public to applaud your appalling behaviour?’