Footy fans get curried away at the World Cup

Last week, Mohammed Wahid, the owner of Chilcha, in Montague Street, Worthing, was approached by Mustafa Azim, a director of Imperial Air Salvage, to prepare food for 12 of his colleagues – the dishes will be flown to them in Brazil on Wednesday.

Mr Wahid said: “I thought he was making a joke. I couldn’t believe it. In the beginning it was a little bit funny for me. I said how can this happen?”

The overall cost of the delivery will total £4,200 – £1,200 for the curry, £1,800 for the flight to Brazil, £1,000 for a chartered flight to Shoreham to collect the take-away, £100 landing and parking charges and £100 for the taxi to the hotel.

Dishes include palok ponir pokura, singara, fish kata masala, Bombay aloo and pilau rice.

Mr Azim first became aware of Mr Wahid’s cooking talents when the latter provided catering on the set of Tom Cruise’s latest blockbuster The Edge of Tomorrow at Warner Bros. Studios in Leavesden.

Imperial Air Salvage provided planes to be blown up on set.

Mr Azim said: “He came over to the film set and we enjoyed a fantastic meal. It was definitely good quality. It just tasted really nice. It tasted right.

“It would have been nice for it to be a celebratory dish if England had got through. I’m really gutted. I was hoping to see England in at least one match.

“We are from Bangladesh and on a regular basis we eat curry and rice, and fish is part of our diet. There’s not a single restaurant in Brazil that does it.”

Mr Azim, who has tickets to the World Cup final, will fly into Shoreham Airport on a chartered plane to collect the dishes on Wednesday. He will then head to an airport near Heathrow, before boarding a commercial plane to take both him and the food to Brazil.