North Korea is an ideal 'safe' destination for your next holiday

Unless you go with the intention of spying or handing out bibles, you will be totally fine

North Koreans attending a military funeral in Pyongyang earlier this month (AFP)

Suddenly everywhere is dangerous. You can’t go on holiday, fly on a plane, watch sport or attend a thrash metal concert without being the victim of terrorism. At least, that’s the feeling you get when faced with a media wall of “terror” coverage.

My daughter was nervous – she attends a girls’ school in Cheltenham. “Isis hate that don’t they? Will they come and bomb us next,” she asked nervously on the car ride home. I gave her a pretty sanguine reply: growing up in war-torn Beirut tends to put things in perspective. I’m fairly sure that Cheltenham is pretty low on the fundamentalist hitlist but the panic coverage does half of the job for Isis.

So, I thought it might be useful to use my extensive experience of loafing around the globe to give you some “safe” destination suggestions for your next holiday.

The first option might be the least palatable to most of you. The safest places in the world tend to be those under the iron grip of repressive dictatorships. For instance, next summer you might consider a trip to North Korea. I went there in 2009 and can assure you that, unless you go with the intention of spying or handing out bibles, you will be completely safe. Obviously this is not the case for the unfortunate inhabitants of that country, but this didn’t stop you visiting Egypt, did it? In comparison with Egypt, the weather is less clement and the attractions are… shall we say… more specialised. A typical day’s sight-seeing in Pyongyang might include a couple of hours looking round the “Museum of Agricultural Lathes” followed by a trip to the “Dear Leader’s Mother’s Tomb”.

I’m a Dark Tourist and love this kind of destination but I fear that this might not really be one for all the family.

For proper Islamic terror-free destinations, you could do worse than look at an El Al in-flight magazine destinations map. The airline does not visit that many neighbours (except Egypt, ironically) and favours Nepal and South America for Israeli holiday destinations. This then, is my ultimate no-terror travel tip – nervous Brits will follow the Israeli steer and South America is suddenly going to get a lot more popular. Sure, it has the odd drug baron and Maoist guerilla but these seem almost quaint compared with our crazy new world. Head for Guyana –this obscure South American country has a plethora of attractions for the adventurous tourist.

I once rang the Guyanan embassy pretending to be a prisoner who had won the lottery and was about to be released. I wanted to travel the world and was keen to know what there was to see in the country. “Shnakes and shwamps” was the reply from the depressed-sounding official. He forgot to mention that there was talk of reopening Jonestown, the site of the mass suicide of the Jim Jones cult in 1978, as a hotel. Who knows, this could be huge for the Falklands.