‘Children should ALWAYS give up their seats’: GMB weather girl Laura Tobin says elderly couple were right not to move from reserved train seats in row with Kate Garraway and Ben Shephard
- Amanda Mancino-Williams shamed elderly couple occupying her booked seats
- Shared picture on social media of her three children squeezed into three spaces
- But today forecaster Laura Tobin said the children should have given up seats
Laura Tobin today weighed in on the row of whether an elderly couple should have let a mother and her children sit in their pre-booked train seats as she said the pensioners were right to stay put.
The Good Morning Britain weather forecaster told colleagues Kate Garrawaysaand Ben Shephard ‘children should always give up their seats’ on public transport.
The hosts were debating the case of Amanda Mancino-Williams, a furious mother-of-three who slammed an elderly couple for not moving from seats she had reserved.
She claimed the couple refused to move after she advised them that she had pre-booked seats on the packed train from Cheltenham to Nottingham.
The pregnant 37-year-old said the couple had ‘posh accents’ and had told her that her reserved tickets ‘didn’t matter’. Once Amanda consulted the train conductor on Tuesday afternoon she was offered four seats in first class with her children.
Her three children (pictured above) were forced to cram onto two seats, after the couple said their seats ‘didn’t matter’
Amanda had reserved seats on the train and the couple above had refused to move from them
Discussing the row today, Ms Tobin said that if she found herself in the same situation with her daughter, she would have left the couple alone.
‘In my opinion the children should not get the seats, children should always give up their seats,’ she said. ‘If I’d booked a seat with Charlotte I would give up the seat.’
But Hollyoaks actor Jake Quickenden disagreed, saying that the elderly couple should have taken responsibility.
‘I think they should have maybe moved seats, or had a word with the manager and said is there anything you can do?’
Hollyoaks actor Jake Quickenden told the show that he thinks the elderly couple should have been more polite
Ben Shephard said he understood Mancino-Williams’s frustration as Kate Garraway agreed that the episode raised questions about the manners of the couple in question.
It comes after Ms Mancino-Williams took a picture of the couple, and of her three children sharing two seats, after they were alleged to refuse to move to another part of the train.
Posting on Twitter, Amanda said: ‘If a mum with 3 kids and bags has 4 reserved seats for a long train journey, and you’re sitting in their seats on a full carriage, don’t tell them that their tickets don’t matter in a posh voice and then say you’re not moving and refuse to make eye contact. Don’t be these people.’
She then posted a follow-up tweet of her children sitting cramped, with her 12-year-old ‘staring the couple down’.
She added: ‘I would always give up a seat, reserved or not, for someone who needed it more. But for her to tell me that my tickets meant nothing and then refuse to acknowledge me? Do people just expect you to slink away?’