Winker

I think we can guarantee that August 22nd will pass quietly, internationally speaking, this year. The BBC's World Affairs Editor, John Simpson, will be entertaining travellers who are on a South African touring holiday, offered by the Telegraph with its partner Africa Travel (of Shepherd's Bush Road).

It's a snip at £3,890 per person for 11 nights (two of them in the air). Single supplement is £790. On Day 8, John joins the group for a tour of Robben Island, and a walk through downtown Cape Town, followed by a Q&A session and dinner at the Table Bay Hotel.  John will perhaps recount the day of Nelson Mandela's inauguration as President when he "gave me and my camera a wink and a thumbs up as it happened".

John is billed as columnist for Ultratravel, the Telegraph's quarterly luxury travel magazine. For the Spring 2015 issue, he recounts clambering on hands and knees to a remote lapis lazuli mine in Afghanistan. He still seems to be a columnist for British Airways High Life, where, in the May issue, he reveals he is moving the Simpson family from Dublin back to the UK.  Just saving you time reading all this...