Keeping up with the Joneses

[Vinnie] Jones, who achieved widespread fame in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels … reckons that he could have an entire aeroplane’s cabin crew bumped off for a mere £3000.  This was his claim, somewhere between Tokyo and Heathrow, sometime last May, when a member of said cabin crew attempted to remonstrate with him for slapping a fellow passenger in the face, 10 times.  And this was not a shonky, under-manned CheapyJet Air Van.  This was a Virgin Atlantic A340-600, the longest commercial aeroplane in the world, with an on-board staff of 19. That’s less than £158 each.  Cheap for a stewardess, and a downright bargain for the pilot.

                    – Hugo Rifkind, “Keeping up with the Joneses”, The Herald, 15 December 2003.