Airport jobsworths will always get away with it
Just how much there-forthe-grace-of-god empathy do we feel with poor Mary Beard, forced to strip at the behest of bossy jobsworths at Heathrow?
My Rigby & Peller underpinnings regularly set off the alarms at Stansted, but a hasty pat-down doesn’t compare to the humiliation of disrobing down to one’s “scrappy undies” in public.
Documentary-maker Beard, 64, who is professor of classics at Cambridge University, was travelling through security at the airport when she was ordered to remove her jacket.
Unfortunately, the “jacket” was actually a tunic, as she endeavoured to explain. But to no avail, all common sense having been removed and popped in a tray along with boots, belts and laptops.
“To be honest, I’m not very easily humiliated, but it was a surprise,” she later wrote. “Staff polite, but insistent. Following instructions, I guess. Don’t want to get them into trouble.”
That was pretty magnanimous, given the attention her ancient-vest-nobra combo garnered from her fellow passengers.
Beard went on to receive a fulsome apology from the
Heathrow authorities, but I’m not sure Joe Public would have been afforded such a graceful response.
In truth, there’s no point pleading, much less arguing, with anyone at an airport. Uppityness masquerading as vigilance is a key perk of the job.
The combination of po-faced, but excessively powerful staff and endless queues of mildly agitated people going somewhere a lot nicer than Gatwick makes the whole process cheerless and charmless.
Speak out of turn (à la “Sorry, but I’m in a hurry…”) or ask for any sort of minor concession, such as not removing a sleeping toddler from a pushchair or stripping to your smalls, and that’s your plane missed.
But there’s nothing to be done about it, because it’s all in the cause of “security”, one of those umbrella terms that can be used to police – and punish – all human behaviour.
The only viable option for Mary Beard and the rest of us is to go glam and take the precaution of wearing our Undie Best lingerie every time we check in. Tunic optional.