Air travel has done more for world peace than any other single entity in the history of mankind. The more countries you visit, the more you understand that people from other cultures and races and places are just like you — except America obviously — so you’re less likely to want to shoot them.

The reason why there’s been peace in western Europe for more than 60 years has nothing to do with the European Union or Nato and everything to do with Ryanair. I’d give the chairman the Nobel peace prize, frankly.

But somehow Gordon Brown has got it into his head that aeroplanes are hurting the sky through which they fly and that he must therefore double airport tax. This means the cost of your annual Christmas holiday in Barbados will rise from £9,482 to a staggering £9,487.

Anyway, to mark Mr Brown’s decision to save the world, I decided to go to Budapest. For lunch.

I’ve often said that if I came to power, the first thing I’d do is declare war on Hungary. This is because it’s the only country in western Europe I’ve never visited. And what you don’t know is scary. Hell. Malignant tumours. Strange noises in the house in the middle of the night. Hungary. They’ve always been the same in my book.

So when a friend rang and asked if I’d like to go Budapest, for the day, I said “er”. Then he said we’d be going on a private jet so I said “yes”.

It belonged to a company called Gama Aviation, which charters its fleet out to the likes of Michael and Winner, and it was jolly lovely. But not half as lovely as the airport in Farnborough, Hampshire, where it’s based.

Check-in time is one minute before the scheduled departure. Or one hour afterwards, if you can’t be bothered to get up. It doesn’t really matter because all you have to do is show your passport to a man, who for reasons I couldn’t fathom, was wearing a high-visibility jacket. Perhaps he thought he might be knocked down by a vacuum cleaner.

Whatever, soon we were on board in a big swivelly seat, wondering whether to have our champagne neat or with a swan in it.

After we landed, a woman called Victor introduced us to our driver. He was called Victor too and he only had one word of English, which was “moment”. That, in the big scheme of things, was not terribly useful.

For instance, when he parked outside a big hotel in the middle of a rather boring square, and we asked why, he said: “Moment.” Plainly, he was KGB and we were all going to be killed.

But no. After 20 minutes, another Victor arrived and told us to go shopping.

Budapest, it turns out, is the worst shopping city in the whole of the world. Walking down the pedestrianised main street is exactly like walking through the centre of Croydon 40 years ago, except that all the men are sweeping leaves and all the girls are wearing knee-length shorts with turn-ups. This is not a good look at the best of times, but it’s even worse when you have an arse like a championship pumpkin.

We took a trip down memory lane by going into C&A. Other than this, the only shops were Vision Express and Hungarian trinketry emporiums that sold a wide variety of 3ft-tall motorised gnomes.

Eventually we came across a market where two burly looking Victors were hitting lumps of red hot metal with hammers, and you could buy hats.

They were not like any hats I’d ever seen. Fashioned from what was undoubtedly carpet underlay, they were shaped like tubas and were 3ft tall.

Obviously I had to have one, which meant trying to work out how much they cost. I don’t know what currency they use in Hungary — pigs, I think — and nor could I work out how many sucklings you get to the euro. This is because Victor, the hat seller, only had one word of English, which was “moment”.

After the shopping trip we had a look round. And here’s what you need to know. There is a bridge that links Buda with Pest. There are some green statues of people you’ve never heard of, there’s a long thin building and everything is grey. The shops are grey. The river is grey. The cars are grey.

And the sky is as grey as the shorts with turn-ups.

So we went for lunch where a man called Victor brought us pâté, and goulash and duck and it only cost four pigs. “Do you want Hungarian wine?” he asked. Not really.

After our feast, we couldn’t think of anything to do so we rekindled the lost art of having a food fight and then went back to the airport, got on our Falcon, and came home.

Conclusions? Well as I sat in my apartment block in London that night, trying to get half a ton of paprika out of my hair, I decided that I’m sold on private jets and that I no longer want to declare war on Hungary. It would be like waging war on a mental institution.

But there’s something else I thought of too. My noodle delivery man was French, the girl in the coffee shop downstairs is Polish, the lift is always full of Americans speaking two stroke and the girl on the till in my local supermarket is proof positive that Mars is definitely capable of spawning life.

So actually, we don’t need air or even space travel any more. Because these days, the best way of meeting other people is to stay at home.

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