You know things aren’t quite normal when the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom tells you - while flying at 35,000 - that he’s just been given a gun as a present. This bizarre incident capped off an extraordinary mid-week jaunt to Turkey in which a grinning Sir Keir Starmer also hand-delivered a birthday cake to a prominent TV reporter on the flight out, declaring “I don’t have a knife”.
That happened minutes before Nigel Farage decided to detonate a nuclear bomb on British politics. If Carlsberg did unusual flights!! This ‘mile-high club’ of a very different kind came as I travelled with the PM to the Nato summit in Ankara on Tuesday.
As other political hacks and I settled into the four-hour flight to the Turkish capital, we got our first glimpse of the outgoing Prime Minister.
He’d popped to the back of the plane, dressed a bit like Andy Burnham (black casual top, jacket and trainers), to say hello.
The smiling Starmer was clutching an England football top (which he was to wear when meeting his Norwegian counterpart the following day) and appeared in a very relaxed mood for what was going to be his final summit as boss.
Less than an hour later, he was back grinning again. This time Sir Keir was armed with a birthday cake for GB News chief political correspondent Katherine Forster.
He joked that “he didn’t have a knife” and hung around chatting for a while before heading to the front of the plane.
Time passed when, somewhere above the Black Sea, the bombshell broke.
Farage’s dramatic tweet - that he would be making a statement about his political future at 2pm - first sent shocked gasps up and down the cabin.
The gasps quickly turned into fevered speculation about what the most influential politician of his generation was about to announce.
Being on the Prime Minister’s plane, you would think that the onboard wifi would be of a decent standard.
Alas, no. Information from back in Westminster was patchy, to say the least.
Was he quitting politics altogether? Is he ill? He’s definitely having an operation. He’s going to call a by-election. Speculation was rife.
I messaged him directly myself - I suspect it’s still floating around the sky somewhere above Istanbul - and several other contacts to find out what was going on.
None of the travelling pack - including journalists from every national newspaper, the BBC’s Political Editor Chris Mason, birthday-girl Katherine and Sky’s Beth Rigby - knew.
It was the sixty million Turkish Lira question on everyone’s lips.
By the time we landed in Ankara it was almost time for Farage to do his bit, so, after watching not one, but two, Air Force One’s take off, I fired up YouTube on my phone.
As our mini bus hurtled towards the Radisson Blu myself and half a dozen reporters listened intently as Farage began to speak.
By the time he reached his crescendo, announcing that he was resigning as an MP to trigger a by-election in Clacton, we were now outside the hotel in baking 35C heat, ears still trained on his every word.
As a journalist you always want to be where the story is and it was blatantly obvious that I was in the wrong place.
Two thousand miles away in the wrong place.
Over the next 36 hours the summit passed without too much drama.
We had a ‘virtual’ briefing with Rachel Reeves, who was in London, about defence funding and Donald Trump decided he wanted Greenland again.
I and a few others met with new Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis at the sleepy late-colonial British Ambassador’s residence after a delightful Turkish breakfast of olives, eggs, cheese and fruits.
Then it was to the Nato summit centre itself for an on-the-record chat with the Prime Minister.
I was sitting next to Sir Keir when I asked him about the man of the moment in Clacton, Count Binface, and the whole Farage situation.
During the media ‘huddle’ it was apparent that his departure from No 10 cuts deep for Sir Keir and I noticed that he twice became emotional, almost welling up, when he was asked about his political demise.
The flight home was continuing in traditional fashion - typing away on my laptop with an occasional G&T hydration break - when Sir Keir appeared grinning again.
Having been on countless Prime Ministerial trips with David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak during the past two-decades, this behaviour was becoming somewhat unusual.
The Labour leader then proceeded to say that he’d been given a personalised revolver with live ammunition as a gift by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
He said it had been engraved with his name and was one of a series of similar gifts presented to the leader of each country who attended the event in Ankara.
Sir Keir laughed as he said he couldn’t bring the gun back to the UK and that it had remained with British officials in Turkey.
It is expected to be decommissioned before it is returned, meaning it will no longer be capable of firing live ammunition. Thank goodness for that.
I wonder if the next Prime Ministerial overseas trip will be as much fun….over to you Andy!