Ben Shephard almost got to see West Ham raise the Europa League title in person, but his flight was delayed.
The Tipping Point and Good Morning Britain host, 48, is a football fan who cheers for the east London team.
On Wednesday night, Hammers fans around the country wept as they defeated Fiorentina in the Europa Conference League final for their first major title in 43 years.
And at 6 a.m. on Thursday, Ben sat behind the desk with Susanna Reid, unable to contain his delight at the outcome.
However, things may have gone somewhat better for him, as he said that he decided to head over and watch the match live at the last minute.
He added that he was content to watch it from home at first because his boys were studying and wouldn’t be able to attend, but on the day of – and encouraged by the GMB editor and Susanna – he decided to fly to Prague.
Ben was able to book a flight from Gatwick that would have arrived ‘in plenty of time for kick off’ – but after checking in, it was revealed that the aircraft would be delayed ‘for nearly two hours.’
It meant Ben would have arrived with around 20 minutes to go before kickoff, and he was unlikely to arrive before halftime.
‘Suddenly we were looking at flights from heathrow, but the seats went reall quickly. Then it was a dash to Luton for a WizzAir flight from Luton.’
Unfortunately, it proved difficult to ‘check off’ the plane after checking in, with Ben joking: ‘You think it’s hard getting into an airport, getting out of an airport when you’re really up against it time-wise, is a nightmare.’
Despite the assistance of a staff member in getting past passport check and security, ‘it was too late by then.’
He ended up watching it with his children at home, joking that even his wife was watching, and uploaded a cute video of the family applauding Said Benrahma’s penalty.
Another video showed the family watching the squad raise the cup with their arms around each other.
So, all’s well that ends well – especially given Ben was up at the crack of dawn working on GMB, which would have been significantly more difficult had he been in Prague.
Good Morning Britain airs weekdays from 6am on ITV and ITVX
