From Peter Andre to diarrhoea disasters: Why flying economy was better when everyone smoked at the back

In the days when passenger jets had smoking sections, all the most interesting people crammed into the seats at the back of the plane where they smoked and drank together in an impromptu party that could last the entire journey from Sydney to London.

Unfortunately all the dangerous lunatics did, too.

I remember flying from Singapore to London in 1994 with a young rugby player who had recently been released from police custody. He was annoyed that we were sharing the plane with Scottish rock band Primal Scream, and tried to interest me in a plan to attack the lead singer, Bobby Gillespie.

I can’t recall if he was an extremist music critic or motivated by some personal slight, but I managed to convince him to enjoy a night of free beer instead.

Before we landed in England he gave me his phone number, in case I might want to meet up in the future and assault Oasis or Blur, or maybe the Swedish band Europe who recorded that horrible power-metal-pop ballad The Final Countdown (I might have been tempted).

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A couple of years later, I was on a Philippine Airlines flight from Sydney to Manila when I noticed the singer Peter Andre sitting across two seats in front of me. He told me that his management had booked two economy-class seats for him because business class was full.

The only other celebrities I had ever seen in the air were the late country musician Reg Lindsay, the late former immigration minister Al Grassby (showing my age), and Nene King who used to be my boss at Woman’s Day.

I was so excited to meet Andre that I made a vow to include his name in every piece of journalism I subsequently wrote, but I only managed to squeeze him into three stories before my editor noticed and pulled the plug.

The strangest encounter I ever had on a plane was on a flight between London and New York, when I saw that the woman next to me was reading a local paper from the place where I was born. I asked to borrow it, she asked my name, and then said that she had known me when I was growing up.

She excitedly revealed my identity to her husband (“It’s Gerry’s son!”), who couldn’t have been less interested, then told me that my aunty (who I hadn’t seen for 20 years) was having an affair.

On a journey back from Byron Bay I sat next to two elderly women (that is, they were marginally older than me), one of whom carrying a copy of Marie Claire magazine.

Once again, I asked if I could have a look.

Later we got talking, and I mentioned my children.

“Oh,” she said. “We thought you were gay.”

Because I was interested in Marie Claire?

“No,” she said, “because you’ve got a red cabin bag.”

Right.

More recently I was asked by a woman in a window seat if I was Chinese, because I had taken a picture of my inflight meal (I look marginally less Chinese than the Pope).

I explained to her that I had told the airline that I was a Hindu (I am marginally less Hindu than the Pope) because I wanted curry for dinner instead of the usual tasteless gloop — and I was collecting photographic evidence of my success.

By preference, I am an aisle-seat passenger. I was unimpressed when airlines began to charge passengers to choose their seats, although I would happily pay to choose the person I sit with: nobody who weighs more than 110kg; nobody who uses their phone without headphones; nobody with a bladder problem; nobody who wants to start a fight with a rock band; and nobody who has just taken sleeping pills.

I don’t have a problem with people who sleep through a flight — that’s generally my own ambition after a couple of beers and a bottle of wine — but sleeping pills can be a problem. Not long ago, the passenger sitting in the middle seat on a flight from London to Sydney was terrified of being hemmed in and he begged me to give up my aisle seat for him.

I thought about it for a while and had to admit to myself that I had led a largely selfish life as a travel writer who had once sat behind Peter Andre, so I did as he asked. I immediately experienced that warm glow that comes from performing a good deed for a stranger.

I then took a sleeping pill, and experienced that warm glow that comes with being desperate to get to the bathroom because the pill gave me diarrhoea.

I had to climb over my claustrophobic neighbour at least 10 times during the flight, and I’m sure he would have slept far better in his assigned seat.

I don’t smoke anymore and I don’t miss it, but I do kind of miss the days when all the naughty children sat together at the back.

Even after it became illegal to light up on planes, a few determined smokers struggled to maintain the anarchy on longer-haul flights. On a post-smoking ban journey between Sydney and Perth, I drank heavily with a mining engineer who insisted on using the business-class bathroom even though we were sitting in economy, then got up again to disable the toilet smoke alarm and enjoy half a cigarette (he invited me to smell the fresh tobacco on his breath).

He was a colourful Aussie bush character, and he turned out to be an angry, unpleasant bigot — as colourful Aussie bush characters often do — but at least I remember him.

I wonder if other passengers remember the straight male with the red cabin bag; the boy whose aunty was having an affair; the food photographer pretending to be a Hindu; or the seat donor with diarrhoea.

I don’t suppose any of them miss me. Except maybe Peter Andre.*

*See what I did there?