Hosting a meal in a place with a jaw-dropping view is one way to impress your dinner guests - but the explorer David Hempleman-Adams today revealed he had broken a world record with his latest dinner party.

Earlier this month, Mr Hempleman-Adams held the world’s highest formal dinner party in a specially-designed hot air balloon.

Along with fellow adventurers Bear Grylls, 30, and 34-year-old Lieutenant Commander Alan Veal, he took the balloon to a height of 24,262ft - around 4.5 miles - before Mr Grylls and Mr Veal climbed 40ft down from the balloon basket to a suspended dinner table and chairs.

Once seated at the table, the duo ate a three-course meal, saluted the Queen and then - still in formal evening wear - skydived back down to earth.

They enjoyed asparagus tips, duck a l’orange and fruit terrine, with side orders of freezing temperatures of -50C and the dangers of life-threatening hypoxia - a condition in which the body stops functioning properly because of a lack of oxygen.

The dinner party team took around 45 minutes to reach the record height of 24,262ft and spent around 20 minutes eating the three-course meal.

Their food was kept warm in specially designed boxes, and all the cutlery and plates were fixed to the table.

At one point, Mr Grylls lost his oxygen mask as he hung upside down from the table - but the team hailed the stunt as a great success.

“The only drawback was the other two members of the team ate all the food so there was nothing left when I landed,” Mr Hempleman-Adams said.

The team had previously said the attempt to break the Champagne Mumm altitude challenge would take place at Ston Easton, near Bath, today - but today revealed the stunt had been successfully completed on June 23.

The previous record was set by the adventurer Henry Shelford, who held a dinner party 22,326ft up a Tibetan mountain in 2004.

Celebrating his successful challenge today, Mr Hempleman-Adams said: “Without doubt, this is the strangest record I have ever attempted. It was a fun stunt, but was at the same time very dangerous. There were potentially a lot of things that could have gone wrong.”

In 1996, Mr Hempleman Adams became the first Briton to walk solo and unsupported to the South Pole. Four years later, he broke another world record when he became the first man to fly a balloon over the North Pole. In 2003, he crossed the Atlantic by the same means.