I took the short flight from London to Amsterdam last Sunday. I had an aisle seat and a middle-aged couple joined me; the woman taking the window seat and her oversized husband the middle one. He could just about push-fit himself into the seat with some wriggling, wiggling and downward force with the aid of the armrests. I was impressed with his technique and gave him mental positive marks.

The plane doors were shut and the various preparation began with announcements, apologies for the slight delay, and then the interesting flight safety nonsense we always get. Throughout all of the above, which must have taken at least 15 minutes, my fellow passenger busied himself trying to buckle up his seatbelt without success. He was short by about 3cm. He breathed in, varied the position of the belt around his girth, pulled at the two parts, wriggled and wiggled some more, then elbowed both his partner and me a few times but, the damned two parts of the seatbelt remained stubbornly separated by 3cm.

In the end, he placed the longer part of the belt with the buckle over his stomach and placed his left arm, which is nearest to me, over the other part of the belt with the help of a newspaper to give the impression to the inspecting flight attendant that the belt is nicely buckled, except the shorter side is invisible due to the arm and newspaper accidentally covering the other side.

The tension began to rise as the flight attendants began their long and languid inspection of everyone’s readiness to take off , seats were put in upright position, small bags stowed, computers closed, and seatbelts visibly fastened. For amusement, I placed a bet on him being rumbled or getting away with it. I must admit, I really wanted him to get away with it. I thought: this chap is well and truly wedged in his seat and it would take a small nuclear explosion to shift him from there so, a seatbelt is quite redundant in this case.

The attendant was three rows away now, I began to shift my position to give him extra cover; two rows away, I made myself taller and bigger for additional camouflage; one row away, I closed my eyes and prayed hard. The attendant came in line with our row and I could feel my heart beating and my subconscious going: please move on, please move on! The flight attendant moved on, my fellow passenger, his wife and I heaved a huge collective sigh of relief; that was a close call! Anyway, I won my bet with myself and collected five imaginary euros.

All was well for the next 45 minutes and then the inevitable happened, the captain came on the PA and announced we are landing in 10 minutes and urged us all to fasten our seatbelts. My heart sank!

You can guess what happened. Yes, the poor chap began the same routine all over again in the hope that he might be able to do over the flat land of the Netherlands what he failed to accomplish on the grounds of West London.

At this point, I lost sympathy for him and wondered why he thought he had lost enough weight to be able to bridge the 3cm gap; unless he thought he sweated enough trying to do it first time and therefore, stood a better chance now. As the flight attendant approached, he employed the same technique of camouflaging his failure. He managed it but, without my help this time because I did not want to lose another five euros.