Mark Andrews: RyanAir boss on drinking, using the 'wrong words', and Boris's take on the falling birth rate

Questioning the need for airport bars to serve alcoholic drinks before breakfast time, RyanAir boss Michael O’Leary says: “I fail to understand why anybody in airport bars is serving people at five or six o’clock in the morning. Who needs to be drinking beer at that time.”

Dunno. Maybe people who are about to spend four or five hours in a cramped seat, with negligible legroom, cooped up with people who may or may not be on their best behaviour, in a garish blue and yellow space, where a fanfare is played if the plane lands on time?

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O’Leary, of course raises a valid point about drunken behaviour on flights. The one thing that is more unpleasant than a RyanAir flight is being stuck on a RyanAir with a load of boorish, inebriated passengers singing a chorus of Sweet Caroline in between belches. But instead of lecturing the airports, he could maybe lead by example by refusing to serve drinks on RyanAir flights before midday. Because people far more cynical than myself might question why a company which made 4.72 billion euros last year from selling on-board drinks, snacks and duty-free, would be against people popping into Wetherspoon’s before take-off.

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PR award of the month though must go to man-of-the-moment Zack Polanski, explaining his untrue claim that he used to work as a spokesman for the British Red Cross.

“I used the wrong word, and I accept that,” he said contritely. A bit like when Boris Johnson ‘used the wrong word’ when trying to explain that, indeed, parties did take place inside Downing Street during lockdown. Or when Tony Blair honestly attempted to inform us there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

And, of course, how the members of Palestine Action occasionally use the wrong words when they express their feelings of peace and love towards Jewish people on their weekly marches through London.

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Talking of Boris Johnson, he makes a very good argument in his Daily Mail column that fears about a falling birth-rate in the western world are greatly exaggerated. He, quite rightly, argues that most of the environmental problems the world is facing at the moment, in particular the destruction of the rain forests in the southern hemisphere, are due in no small part to the exponential growth in the world population that has taken place during our lifetimes.

These are all arguments that have been made many times in this column, so it is good to know that the former PM is reading wisely, and learning quickly. But maybe somebody with ‘nine known children’ is possibly not the best person to make that case?