On Sunday (and little-reported, let’s face it, because they are black) the eight Ethiopian guides and assistants, kidnapped in the Danakil Depression along with five white British embassy staff, were found safe and well. They had been released by their captors, weeks after the release of the embassy staff.

Did you wonder why, after the release of the Europeans, there were no “My journey into hell” stories from any of them in the newspapers? They could have sold such stories for tidy sums, but all chose not to. They were unwilling to inflame the situation and endanger the lives of their Ethiopian comrades, still in captivity. So we read no “tears of joy” accounts: just the sober comment that the embassy staff’s first thoughts were for their missing comrades. Good for them.

And it worked. The atmosphere calmed, people could think and talk quietly, and the Afars who (presumably) captured the party, and were never, I believe, serious political activists or “terrorists” anyway, let them go.

A pity the British Admiralty felt that after the recent Iranian kidnap it could not count on the discretion of its own personnel. Clearly the British embassy could.

This, from a BBC internal staff information sheet: “In the first release we will be rolling out leave and absence management functionality to those who are not on the current Allocate system . . .”

If this is how the corporation talks to itself, what hopes for plain speaking with the rest of us?

Gulp. This is going to enrage someone I think of as a friend, but who may not, after this morning, feel I’m treating him like one. After the Tories’ travails over Greg Dyke I have had to accept that what another friend wrote (in another newspaper) a year ago was right.

John Major. It’s obvious he should stand as Tory candidate for Mayor of London, isn’t it? Sir John has always been personally respected and his political star has been gently rising with hindsight since his departure ten years ago. Many still miss him. Perhaps his greatest project, the move towards rapprochement in Northern Ireland, is doing well. His behaviour towards his old party has been impeccable – standing supportive but a little apart, refraining from back-seat driving or embarrassing and patronising his successors, but allowing himself just the hint of a comment on this or that when it really seems to matter.

What a waste that he should not contribute more. Major’s a Londoner through and through, and a former South London councillor. Shortly to launch a book on cricket (More Than a Game) he’s a sports fan, well positioned, alongside his fellow Tory Sebastian Coe, for the London Olympics. He’s a former Chancellor of the Exchequer and a former banker who understands the City. He can do sums – a London mayor will need a critical and numerate eye in the decade ahead. His time in Downing Street and at the Foreign Office equips him with the friends and contacts abroad that London needs. On the streets, and in his gentle way, he’s always been a good hand-shaker and listener: civil, warm, a diplomat and counsellor.

The downside? For him, personally, huge. Journalists and enemies going through his dustbins again, carping at his directorships, checking whether his light bulbs are energy-efficient – who wants it? He’s enjoying life, enjoying cricket, enjoying business, enjoying privacy after seven years of media hell. But is that how he wishes to go – strolling off amiably towards the sunloungers, and sundowners, and sunset? All the others have. Tony Blair, whatever you may suppose, will do nothing more in his life. Margaret Thatcher didn’t. Jim Callaghan, Ted Heath, Harold Wilson, Harold Macmillan didn’t. They all just drifted away, and in every case the spectacle has been melancholy. Why not buck the trend?

The speech Major could make, writes itself, and it starts: “This is not, for me, an itch for office or prominence – after seven years at the top I’ve had all that . . .” and goes on to be perfectly civil about his old friend Ken Livingstone, and concludes that he’ll be sorry but not hurt, and even relieved, if he doesn’t win; but thought that he should at least put his services and experience at Londoners’ disposal: “It’s an offer, that’s all. You may take it or leave it.” I think he would win. He knows he would.

Contradict me if you dare: no British prime minister in history has ever done anything seriously worthwhile or interesting after leaving Downing Street. How about being the first, John?

Times Recommends

• Copenhagen will fail – and quite right too
• They’re still wriggling to avoid the flak on Iraq
• Rule the waves? Not any more we don’t