THE celebrity leaders of an anti-airport campaign have had their own jet-setting lifestyles turned against them.

Jamie Oliver, the chef, and Terry Waite, the former Beirut hostage, have been at the forefront of campaigns to prevent the expansion of Stansted in Essex.

The Government has proposed up to three new runways, which would make it double the size of Heathrow.

Freedom to Fly, a pressure group which campaigns for more runways, found Mr Oliver’s internet diary, which chronicles his globe-trotting lifestyle. According to the diary, he took 24 overseas flights last year. Mr Waite is also said to be a frequent flyer, clocking up 50,000 or more air miles a year.

Freedom to Fly, which is funded primarily by British Airways, the airports operator BAA, and Virgin Atlantic, is placing advertisements in local newspapers showing photographs of Mr Oliver and Mr Waite. Under the caption “They fly, Why shouldn’t you?”, the advertisement says that both men have “confessed” to being regular airline passengers. The advertisements are to appear next week in the Crawley Observer, the East Anglian Daily Times and the Hounslow Chronicle, which respectively serve Gatwick, Stansted and Heathrow.

Mr Oliver has just returned from Norway and Sweden. In the past 18 months he has visited Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Wellington, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, Chicago, Toronto, Munich, Miami, Vienna, Copenhagen and Amsterdam.

Mr Waite travels around the world carrying out Christian work and lecturing, among others, to cruise ship passengers. Among his interests listed in Who’s Who is “travel, especially in remote parts of the world”.

Dan Hodges, director of Freedom to Fly, said: “We have no objection to celebrities such as Jamie Oliver and Terry Waite campaigning against new runways. But to do so while flying so frequently themselves smacks of hypocrisy. They should at least have the courage of their convictions and stop flying so often.”

Mr Hodges said that if everyone in the South East flew as often as Mr Oliver then the region “would need 20 airports the size of Heathrow”.

Mr Oliver, who has an £855,000 16th-century manor house near his parents’ home in Clavering, Essex, led a 1,000-strong protest march through London in November, accompanied by his wife, Jules, and their daughter, Poppy. He said then: “I don’t want to live in a building site and I think the Government has overestimated the economic benefits of the proposals.”

He has since refined his position to make clear that he does not oppose building runways elsewhere in the South East but believes “an offshore airport” would be the best option. He proposed “something really cutting-edge — where aircraft take off and land on runways out at sea so that noise and pollution is kept well away from inhabited and environmentally sensitive areas.”

His spokesman said that Mr Oliver was unable to comment because he was making satellite broadcasts to the United States. “In some ways the satellite link-up stops him from flying,” the spokesman added.

Mr Waite, who lives in Hartest in Suffolk, close to the Stansted flight path, will address an estimated 1,000 people expected at an anti-runway rally in Broxted on Sunday, June 29.

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