A report today on the BBC News website, quoting the Henley MP as saying that there was now "too much" pressure on children to eat healthily, sent the Conservative spin machine into urgent damage-limitation mode.

The BBC said that Mr Johnson, who is the party spokesman on higher education, attacked the chef's campaign at a meeting at the party conference last night and backed a group of mothers who made headlines for passing fast food through the fence of their children's school in Yorkshire.

"I say let people eat what they like. Why shouldn't they push pies through railings?" he told the fringe meeting at a Bournemouth hotel.

The comments were particularly embarrassing given David Cameron's ringing endorsement of Mr Oliver in his speech to the conference on Sunday, when he said that the celebrity chef had done more than the Department of Education to improve the quality of school meals.

Mr Oliver's Feed Me Better campaign has forced the Government to boost expenditure on school means and order education authorities to get rid of junk food.

Soon after the publication of the BBC report, a Conservative press officer was overheard phoning Mr Oliver's office to explain that Mr Johnson's comments "absolutely" did not represent party policy.

Then Mr Johnson told reporters that he had been in fact misquoted - and the point he was trying to make was that children would not eat healthy food unless unhealthy options, including lunchboxes, were taken away.

"I think Jamie Oliver is a wonderful guy. He's a saint, he's a national superstar and he's done a wonderful thing for children's food," the mop-headed Tory said.

"The only point I was making, and I think Jamie would agree with this, is that it's very difficult for him to succeed in transforming children's food in schools completely when they still have the option to have a packed lunch.

"The BBC is completely wrong."

It was Mr Johnson's most high-profile political intervention since he was sacked as Shadow Culture Secretary two years ago for a leader column in The Spectator, which he then edited, attacking the "victim culture" of Liverpool .

On that occasion, Mr Johnson was forced to visit Merseyside in a humiliating mission of penitence by the party leader at the time, Michael Howard.

This afternoon, the BBC said that it was sticking by its story and had cleared the quotes with Mr Johnson before running the piece.

The BBC reporter who attended the meeting even produced his notes from the meeting and said that Mr Johnson had in fact said: "If I was in charge, I would get rid of Jamie Oliver, tell people to eat what they like."

He said that Mr Johnson had told the meeting that the best way to make kids eat properly was to give them "Plaice goujons with frites" - fish fingers and chips.

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