Unbelievable.
James Kavanagh and Holly Carpenter have revealed that they got arrested during a trip to Paris only months before Covid hit.
The two best friends took a trip to the French capital in January 2020, but up until now, they hadn’t given the real details of what went down while they were there.
Speaking on Holly’s new podcast Filter Free, James confessed all, saying: “I kind of held back on telling this story because I felt like we did something wrong… but we actually hadn’t!
“For a long time I was ashamed of it. I was borderline traumatised.”
James told the story of how they planned a last minute trip with friends Rob Kenny and Stefan Langan, and as they were meeting Rob there, the three decided to have a few drinks at the airport before heading off.
After enjoying three bottles of prosecco, James said they had gotten “quite lit” on the plane journey over.
Upon landing, the three made their way to passport control before James realised he didn’t have his passport. He then ran back to the plane to look for it and admitted he may have been “a bit too loud.”
With no luck finding the passport, Stefan went through passport control while James and Holly frantically searched his suitcase.
James said: “Next of all I look up and there’s riot police men with guns pointed at me and Holly, and I was like ‘sorry?’”
Next thing they knew they were in handcuffs and not being told why.
“So we were handcuffed and brought into this room, and at this stage I was still a bit giddy and I don’t know if I thought it was real, because it was just so ridiculous, we hadn’t done anything to warrant an arrest,” James explained.
“We were handcuffed in public, in front of everyone, everyone was like gasping.
“At the time there was huge riots going on in France so I don’t know if they were just on high alert and thought we were more dangerous than we were.
“We were just two lit girls from Dublin. My crime is that I like to have fun!
“So we were brought into this room, now the worst thing about this was no one told us why we were arrested, they were laughing at us.”
Holly chimed in saying she was bawling at this point, and it didn’t take long for the two to sober up.
James added: “I was pleading with them like ‘can you tell us why we’re in here?’ And they kept saying ‘non, be quiet’.
“It was honestly like we were being kidnapped, they weren’t even wearing policed uniforms either it was like riot gear.”
Holly was then taken into a room and strip-searched while the two then had their blood tested, and then when they were “frogmarched with guns through the airport”, they thought it was over.
But no, they were then put in the back of a car and brought to jail, with policemen “laughing” at how upset they were.
It took 15 hours before they were released and got to experience their holiday, but at this point they were “shook” over what had happened.
“I was so shook, and I felt kind of violated as well. They upended my suitcase, they laughed in my face, they made me give them my bra. They were so shady,” Holly said as James admitted €200 was taken from his wallet in custody.
