REM star ransacked first-class flight cabin, court told staff tell court

An air stewardess described yesterday how she feared Peter Buck, a guitarist from the band REM, would stab someone after he "ransacked" the first-class cabin of a transatlantic flight.

Nara Incecchi said she was "scared to death" when Mr Buck overturned a breakfast trolley, scattering cutlery over the cabin floor, and tried to slip a knife up his sleeve.

The incident marked the end of a drunken rampage that started when Mr Buck and his tour manager, Robert Whittaker, began behaving like "schoolboys on a jolly", Isleworth Crown Court was told.

After drinking heavily before take-off, they started taking photographs of food and Mr Whittaker smeared his face in melted ice-cream and giggled, cabin crew members said.

By the time Mr Buck, 45, calmed down, it was claimed he had covered two cabin crew in yoghurt, smashed crockery and attempted to insert a compact disc into a catering trolley, believing it was a CD player.

The court was told that several hours into the British Airways flight from Seattle to Heathrow last April, Mr Buck walked into the galley swearing after staff refused to serve him more red wine.

Holly Ward, a stewardess, said that when she and a steward, Mario Agius, tried to get Mr Buck back to his seat, he threatened them and tried to throttle Mr Agius. A pot of yoghurt Mr Buck was carrying burst open.

Ms Incecchi said Mr Buck then attacked a breakfast trolley laden with yoghurts, cereal, sugar and jam, worth £174.

"He reached for the trolley and virtually lifted it with quite a lot of strength and threw it over. The first-class cabin looked as if it had been ransacked. There was a mess all over the floor. I thought 'There are knives on the floor, he's drunk, he's going to grab a knife and someone is going to be injured'," she said.

Mr Buck denies being drunk on an aircraft, damaging crockery, and two counts of common assault on cabin crew.