I was travelling in a taxi recently and found a pile of papers that had been left behind. It appeared to be the first draft of a new Radio 4 panel game hosted by the famous Humphrey Lyttelton. The working title was “I’m Sorry I Haven’t An E-Ticket”. All it contained was the Chairman’s script for Humph to read through. Before returning the document, I was able to scan it with my hand scanner and bring you exclusive extracts via FT.

Chairman’s Introduction:
Hello and welcome to this special edition of I’m Sorry I Haven’t An E-Ticket. You join us this week from the British Airways Waterslide Theatre at Heathrow. The Waterslide Theatre has been the venue for many public displays of fictional drama. These have included such famous events as the question and answer panel session featuring BA senior management and the Flyertalk board; the recent announcement that BA Con-nexion services were “an exciting new product” as well as the setting for the fly on the wall drama-documentary “crisis management 101” featuring a baggage handlers strike and no catering.

Heathrow Airport is itself famous as the world’s busiest international airport. The cross-border passenger numbers have been boosted recently thanks to the efforts of Virgin by ensuring that nobody can get from London to Glasgow by train in under three days.

Heathrow was originally a wooded heathland area where bandits performed acts of daring extortion from passengers in stagecoaches. Now, British Airways flights coming into Heathrow feature almost daily hold-ups owing to the “wrong type of air traffic control”. On the site of the most famous daylight robbery, the British Airways Zone R ticket desk now charges an extra £15 for a ticket you cannot possibly purchase on the internet.

Flights to Australia used to route through North Africa, the Middle East, India and Asia. Now, thanks to the vagaries of IATA ticket pricing, it is necessary to travel to Tripoli to purchase a ticket before coming back to London and carrying out several returns between Bahrain and Doha before changing aircraft every 2017 miles along the route in an attempt to gain enough frequent flyer recognition points to allow you to use a Silver coloured self service check in machine instead of the normal blue one.

Today, the aircraft flying from Heathrow make a significant contribution to global warming. Still, that is not the only source of a pointless waste of hot air and late night noise that has done nothing for the good of the planet over the last 40 years. Let’s meet the teams.

On my left we have Barry Cryer and Graham Garden whilst on my right we have Tim Brooke-Taylor and Jeremy Hardy. Meanwhile, sitting in the aisle seat next to me we have our every delightful scorer Samantha who would do anything to get into Club when travelling a mile high.

Round One
We start with the new definitions round. As we travel more often by air we get to understand more of the peculiarities of Aviation English. The word “enhance” has come to mean “to rip-off the passenger” whilst the word “upgrade” has been harmonised with the peculiar understanding of the term imparted by Bill Gates. Tim, will you start please?

Round Two
Round two is the round where the guests sing along with a record and then it fades out. If, when the music comes back, the guest is within a gnat’s tadger of the original then I shall be awarding points. And what do points mean? Points means World Traveller Plus upgrades to Club, subject to availability and the ticket being purchased from British Airways (but not a ticket desk as that confuses the hell out of them), see Executive Club terms and conditions.

Samantha has been down to the record library to carry out some research for the show. She found several heavy boxes and filing cabinets full of records but was not able to sort through them all before the show. One of the archivists was more than happy to help by going for a rummage through Samantha’s drawers whilst in an act of unselfish dedication, Samantha got down on her knees for-later and was happy pulling 7 inchers out of their protective covers in an attempt to bring pleasure to those around her this evening.

Round Three
This round is a new round called “one flight to the codeshare of another”. This is where each member of the panel has to purchase a ticket on a oneworld alliance carrier using a Qantas Amex card to gain miles in one programme, whilst crediting the flight miles to the Asia Miles programme, with the ticket being issued on Aer Lingus ticket stock for billing in US Dollars, for a Lan Chile operated flight using an Iberia codeshare flight number but with access rights to an Admirals Club lounge on departure. The objective is to achieve top Finnair status for less than £2000. To help the teams we have a broadband internet connection and a computer with Colin Sell banging away at the keys and swearing a lot: so nothing new there then. Barry, would you like to start please?

Round Four
And now we have the traditional game of Mornington Crescent. In this game, we shall be using the Fifth Freedom amendment to the Montreal Convention which allows European airlines to fly any route that they like. The usual object of this game is to prevent any passenger from successfully making a journey from Central London to Terminal Four in under two hours on any combination of transport modes you can think off. However, in this low-cost variation, the players are asked to fly cheaply from Bratislava and to get to the City of London without using a low cost carrier. Just a moment, ah yes, thank you, Samantha has just reminded me that for the purposes of this game, SEx is wild.

Round Five
Give us a Clue. This game is based on the TV panel game of the same name. The undoubted master of this genre was Lionel Blair who spent two frantic minutes with John Inman trying to convey the title of a recent cowboy film but John only got as close as Bareback Mounting before Lionel collapsed exhausted having given it his best shot. For the audience, the title will be displayed on the laser display screen, whilst for those of you at home, here comes the mystery voice.

Samantha’s Departure
And so ladies and gentlemen, as the Fasttrack passengers get out their laptops in the security queue of departures and the check-in agents tell you of the downgrade from hell, I see that we are approaching the end of the show. Samantha has to go and meet her new pilot gentlemen friend, Nigel. There is nothing that gives Samantha more pleasure than a man demonstrating great skill with his joystick and pushing all the right buttons to deliver a vertical thrusting motion. So from the teams, myself and the good folk of Waterslide, it's goodbye.

Happy landings

(yes, it was a very long day flight back from Java in economy)
Spottie