He could be forgiven for being a little envious on a number of fronts.

The man who was once commonly known around Parliament as The Great Helmsman Jim Bolger wasn't even in charge of the drinks trolley on the Prime Minister's plane, winging its way to Vietnam over the weekend.

Even though he was treated like a gold elite flyer on the air force 757, he couldn't lay claim to the suite he once used to lavish in up the sharp end of the plane. He was relegated to the equivalent of premium economy while the man who wasn't even in Parliament, when he went back to the farm after losing the top job, occupied pride of place.

Bolger was on board as Chancellor of Waikato University which was an institution he'd never attended as a young man, even though he has been awarded a few honorary doctorates over the years and conferred many more on a number of his contemporaries. The former Prime Minister is part of a trade delegation to Vietnam, selling education to the Asians.

It wasn't only the seating arrangements on the plane that he could have been a little envious at though, it's Teflon John Key's popularity. At around the same period of his own Prime Ministership his colleagues had developed the seven year itch.

Like Key, he was on an overseas trip when the dark forces of rebellion gathered and decided to vote him out of office and Big Jenny Shipley in, making her the first woman leader of our country. She of course got her come uppance at the next election when there was no contest for Helen Clark who became the head girl and never looked like being bowled in her nine years on the Beehive's ninth floor.

She couldn't pull off that illusive fourth term though that all the opinion polls say is a distinct possibility for Key.

But before you start feeling sorry of Bolger, don't. He was pretty well looked after post politics, joining the cocktail circuit as our ambassador in Washington and more recently was swanning around the world in his first class sleeper, drumming up support for us to sit on the United Nations Security Council.

At the tender age of 80, he's still going strong, even if travel on the Prime Minister's plane isn't as comfortable as it used to be.