AS FAR AWAY as in Colombia, we learn of a hilarious turn of events in British politics. Tony Blair offering to make peace in the Middle East? Blue Peter and Songs of Praise for his swansong? I don’t know how it feels in Britain, but here by the banks of the Rio Magdalena one cannot dispel the thought that it might all be some kind of a joke — a hoax.

Thank heavens I’m on the other side of the world, and not being asked to “cast a wry eye over the week’s events” — for, as any present or former parliamentary sketchwriter knows, the obviously ludicrous is impossible to satirise. Some things are beyond parody.

The man’s mad, I tell you; mad. I’ve been saying since 2002 that he was off his head, but would you listen? Analysts and commentators will be struggling to explain the news, but the deconstruction of delusional behaviour is fruitless except for students of psychology.

The late Sir Edward Heath was once asked how he accounted for the fact that Margaret Thatcher seemed to hate him so much. “I cannot say,” he replied. “I am not a doctor.”

• WHEN A country, region or city falls sick, the media are full of horrified stories, but when a place recovers we often forget to report it. This year I’ve visited two enormous countries whose names became synonymous with violence and mayhem but whose problems actually peaked about a decade ago. Both seem well on the way to recovery — and have done for years.

  In February I spent a week in Algeria. While it would be hasty to write off the Islamist challenge there, the tide has been turned by a ruthless fightback by the Algerian Government. Confidence has returned. Algeria has never been well organised as a tourist destination but, as autumn approaches, look at some of the Saharan walking, camel-riding, camping and mountain-hiking holidays available as packages, mostly from France.

  In the weirdly beautiful dry gorges and oases of south eastern Algeria, among rock paintings, thorn trees and dunes, and accompanied only by Beduin guides and their camels, we had a fantastic time. I have seldom felt safer.

• NOW I AM in Colombia. Have you heard of Medellín? This city is bigger than Glasgow but if the name means anything to you then that’s probably only because during the 1980s the place was caught in the crossfire of a series of bloody internal wars against and within the narco-criminal world where the likes of Pablo Escobar ruled. In the suburbs that hang from the mountainsides around the city, there were nights when hundreds died.

  All that is over. I have just visited one of those suburbs. We reached it on an amazing new concept in public transport: mass-transit cable cars. We started in the jostling city centre, where a square is dotted with enormous sculptures by Colombia’s most famous modern artist, a son of Medellín, Fernando Botero. He paints and sculpts fat ladies with fat legs and rippling fat bottoms; and fat men with fat necks and little bowler hats; and even fat cats, fat dogs, fat birds and fat horses. After admiring the fat ladies we boarded the new raised metro system during the evening rush hour and were whisked across the city to the place where the cable car starts.

  Night was falling. All around the great bowl in which Medellín lies, mountains rise into the clouds. Suburbs cling to the steepening slopes and public transport up and down by bus has been a nightmare. We joined a queue — for a cable car. It was rather like an exceptionally busy morning at the foot of a popular Swiss ski slope, except that there were no skis, no snow and the queue consisted of office workers.

  A car arrives every 15 seconds or so, and there is plenty of time for about ten people to board each. Soon, all was quiet (you know that wonderful silence as a cable car soars and the ground drops away) and the city lights twinkled in the valley below. Beneath our car, children played in the streets. There were four “stops” where the cars slow right down at raised platforms and passengers can board and leave; and within ten minutes we were about 1,000ft up the side of the city.

  This is now a safer place for tourists than many North American cities. I don’t know about Glasgow, but Medellín’s miles better.

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