Tony Blair’s personal plane flew hundreds of miles across Africa to collect a gourmet meal, it emerged today.

The chartered British Airways jet made a 1,450-mile round trip from Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa to Nairobi in Kenya to pick up the banquet for the Premier and his entourage for their flight home to London.

The dinner – including asparagus mousse, prawn risotto and cheesecake – had already been flown out to Kenya from London on a normal flight.

But the premier did not even have the meal because he had already eaten in Addis Ababa.

Mr Blair had been in Ethiopia for a meeting of his Africa Commission – which was discussing starvation and poverty.

BA said it had to make the trip to Kenya as that was its nearest base to Ethiopia.

A spokesman said it could not have flown the food out with the Prime Minister four days earlier as it would have gone off.


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“We don’t have a base in Ethiopia,” he said.

“We have a base in Nairobi. During the downtime in Ethiopia the plane flew to Nairobi to pick up the food.”