It starts off as the plaintive enquiry over the loudspeaker at Dublin Airport: "Will the final two passengers for Ryanair flight FR 223 to Torquay-Aberdeen please go to gate 22 immediately, where their plane is fully boarded and awaiting departure."
Five minutes go by. "Will passengers O'Leary and Walsh, passengers on Ryanair Flight 223 to Torquay-Aberdeen please proceed immediately to gate 22, where their plane is fully boarded and is awaiting departure. Failure to comply with this request will mean their bags are removed from the plane, and they will be unable to fly."
Another five minutes. The same request, this time concluding with a little sob, because the Ryanair crew can see their on-time bonuses disappearing. In the plane itself, passengers are crossing and uncrossing their legs and looking at their watches in a marked fashion.
At the airport bar, passengers O'Leary and Walsh are slowly downing the last of their pints, wondering if they have time for another before they go. Yes? No? Yes. Because they know that the very last thing which Ryanair wants to do is to remove all the bags from the plane, which could upset the schedule of every flight on this route for the rest of the day.
"Two pints please - and take it easy with the heads this time - nice and slow."
Last year, while waiting for another flight, I saw the equivalent of O'Leary and Walsh ambling slowly along the concourse, big smirks on their faces, nearly half-an-hour after the lady on the loudspeaker had begun her broken pleading for them to get aboard. Had I had my sword with me, I should have slain them there and then, but alas it was in the cutlers, being sharpened.
The two grinning oafs were allowed through, and the boarding-pass lady didn't knee them in the groin or even claw an eye out. I asked her why and she told me - can you believe this? - that it is apparently against IATA regulations to assault passengers. Things have come to a pretty pass indeed when you cannot indulge in a bit of harmless airport GBH in the right cause.
But what is really mystifying is why Michael O'Leary hasn't done something to counter this problem. Michael O'Leary is the Tasmanian Devil of the airways. He laces his cornflakes with gravel so that his teeth are serrated, the better to lacerate those whom he bites. His mid-morning snacks consist of barbed-wire scones and razor-blade pie. Whenever he gets any dust in his eye, he uses the sharp edge of a broken bottle to remove it. He hardens himself up by putting a red-hot iron down his Y-fronts before meetings, and leaving it there, occasionally having to wipe away the odd tear, but generally smiling with a nonchalant gallantry throughout.
Michael O'Leary is tough, tough, tough. He has Boeing over a barrel, having booked its next 200 years' production of 737s. The profit the Seattle manufacturer is making on every aircraft it sells to Ryanair is half the margin on a Big Mac, but Boeing needs the Big O because his were the only orders in town post 9/11. If he walked, the state of Washington would rapidly resemble Rwanda. To do such a deal with Mr and Mrs Boeing as he did, when the rest of the world was jumping up and down shouting for their mothers, requires nerves of tempered titanium.
So why has he not devised a cure for those who think they have a headlock on an airline once their bags are in the hold? Almost all Ryanair tickets are credit-card purchases, and every deal is accompanied by two million words of microprint.
These include the provision that, if Ryanair wants, it can cancel your flight and sell you into bondage in Sierra Leone, where you will become a sex slave for the West Side Boys. Or, if the Big O is having a bad day, that flight from London to Oslo-Naples (which actually lands in Nepal, the rest of the journey being concluded by yaks) - well, this time it's flying to Knock, from where - for a small surcharge of £250 - Little Sisters of the Lame will piggy-back passengers the rest of the way.
We all know that Michael O'Leary is as reticent as an earthquake. Only he would have the chutzpah to charge for a sandwich what Patrick Guilbaud charges for a 10-course dinner. You can buy a round of drinks in the Four Seasons for what a cup of coffee costs on Ryanair. (You want what? Milk with your coffee? Certainly sir. That'll be another £15 sterling please.) So what has stopped Michael O'Leary levying a huge surcharge on passengers who have checked in but then choose not to board the plane until they have delayed it by half-an-hour or so? Ryanair has everyone's credit card details. A delinquent passenger cannot prevent a Ryanair raid on his account - and look, it's always a him who saunters on late, a big grin of cretinous satisfaction on his face - according to how long he delays the flight.
If airline passengers were contractually bound to be at the departure gate by a particular time, there would be no reason why their fare shouldn't increase steadily thereafter. It would be simply a lateness fee, which would run like a taximeter at, say, €50 a minute. In-flight attendants could lead the punctual passengers in chanting the fine aloud at the red-faced imbeciles as they finally came aboard. My modest contribution to airline punctuality.