It doesn’t get much more awkward than this.
Scottish lingerie tycoon Michelle Mone, who founded the Ultimo Brand International underwear line, was speaking to 3,000 people at an entrepreneurs’ conference in Vietnam over the weekend, when she made a major blunder.
She mistook a man for a six-year-old boy and picked him up after he gave her a bouquet of flowers on stage.
Then she took a selfie with him in front of the crowd.
“Most embarrassing moment,” she later tweeted of the photo op.
The Vietnamese man has identified himself as Nguyễn Tấn Phát. He was first reported to be 46 but is actually 22, and didn’t seem to mind the gaffe. He idolizes Mone, according to his Facebook post on Monday.
Initial media reports said a woman from the audience yelled, “Put him down, I’m his wife!” The 22-year-old insists he’s single, though.
“I hope the man’s age and marital status isn’t the only thing the translators got wrong,” Mone told the Daily Mail. “I had countless conversations through them during my visit.
“People did seem to find most things I said (through the translators) very amusing.”
The baby-faced man didn’t explain his short stature but wrote that he’s been that way since he was six.
He’s also given new meaning to the phrase “picking up men.”
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