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Drunk socialite claimed she was on opium, says passenger
Paul Cheston, Courts Correspondent15 Sep 2009
A socialite who cavorted with a fellow passenger on a flight from India was so drunk she was "on the verge of being dangerous", the captain said today.
Vivek Sondhi said Clare Irby, a descendant of the Guinness brewing family, was drunkenly sprawled in her seat during the flight from Bangalore to Heathrow on March 26.
At one point, she stripped to her knickers while changing from a skirt into leggings and also allowed Daniel Melia, a fellow passenger in the seat behind her, to fondle her breasts, Isleworth Crown Court in London heard.
Mr Sondhi told the jury of eight men and four women that he walked through the plane about four hours into the flight and thought both Irby and Mr Melia were "tipsy".
Asked to what extent they were drunk, Mr Sondhi said: "They were on the verge of being dangerous, I would say, so I asked my flight director to stop serving them any more liquor."
He went on: "They were kind of sprawled in the seats. They were slurring and the man was a little more aggressive in his behaviour."
The captain said he noticed them because Mr Melia asked him to join them for a drink, which he found "very abnormal".
Polly O'Callaghan, another passenger on the flight, said Mr Melia was "quite flirtatious" with Irby and was "touching her face over the seats".
She said Irby responded: "I'm not normally this relaxed. It's just all the opium I've been taking."
Asked whether she was mistaken about hearing the word opium, Miss O'Callaghan said: "That's what I heard. She may have been saying it in jest, but she said it."
Miss O'Callaghan said the pair were being loud and abusive on the flight, repeatedly using the attendant call button "every 10 minutes for two hours".
The court heard that Irby was drinking several glasses of red wine with Mr Melia, 36.
Miss O'Callaghan said Mr Melia's girlfriend was originally sitting next to him but moved to a seat further back, telling him: "You've been ignoring me."
Miss O'Callaghan also told the court that Irby was "quite drunk" and abusive, putting her hand into the face of one of the female flight attendants and calling another a "bitch".
"I assumed they were quite drunk because they became louder and louder," she said.
She added that she was "concerned" about the welfare of Irby's two-year-old son. At one point Irby was asleep while he was jumping up and down on the seat, she said.
Irby also changed her son's nappy and threw the dirty one on to the empty seat behind her.
But Miss O'Callaghan denied seeing Irby kiss anyone during the flight.
Flight attendant Shivaneji Sharma said Irby had three to four glasses of wine in the first 90 minutes of the Kingfisher Airlines flight IT001.
She said that at one point Irby took off her skirt, revealing her G-string, before changing into a pair of leggings in her seat in row 26 at the back of the aircraft.
Yesterday, Arpita Mehra, another flight attendant, told the jury Irby was too drunk to know what she was doing when she stripped on the aircraft.
She added that Irby "was not in a state that she could take care of her child" who was "all on his own and crying in the cabin".
Miss Mehra went on: "She was busy with the guest sitting behind her. They were having a conversation and getting personal with each other and the child was crying.
"The man was leaning forward and grabbing hold of her breast and they were kissing each other."
Asked how Irby responded, she said: "She was enjoying it."
Irby, 30, of Fulham, west London, is the daughter of Old Etonian banker Paul Aschan, a scion of the Guinness brewing dynasty.
She denies being drunk on an aircraft. Mr Melia is not on trial.
