A few years ago, a friend and I were held up at gunpoint in Amsterdam. We were zig-zagging our way back to our cheap but not remotely cheerful hostel when Mr Shifty started following us. It was three in the morning and we were up a dark alley without a paddle. “You got a cigarette?” he shouted. At which point, for some bizarre reason, Tim decided to pretend we were Russian. That was the first wrong move.

“Niecht speekivich English,” he said. “Niecht zigareten.” To which Mr Shifty, quite understandably, replied: “You are English. Have you got a cigarette?” He’d caught up with us now, and he was angry. “Why are you pretending not to be English?” Neither of us knew any real Russian — we just kept on walking. So he hopped in front of us and stuck a gun in my ribs. I’ll be honest, it could have been a banana — it was hidden under his jacket — but that doesn’t make as good a story.

We stopped and he said: “Give me your wallets.” At which point I made the second wrong move: “We don’t have any wallets.” In the end, after much negotiation, threatening and poking, he got our wallets but left us enough cash to get to the bus station the next morning.

We were incredibly stupid and incred-ibly lucky. It’s crises like this, rare as they are, that led to the creation of Objective, a team of ex-soldiers and travel experts who teach intensive courses in health and safety abroad. They equip journalists, film crews and aid-workers with the know-how for work in the front line, but they also have a one-day course for gap-year travellers, and it involves many of the same fundamentals. “We all have a friend or a friend of a friend who has come to grief abroad,” says Objective’s director, Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton. “The statistics are minuscule, and we’re not here to cause panic. But it’s about establishing confidence in travellers so that they can head off any bad situation at the pass.”

A brilliant idea, if it works. About 40,000 “gappers” set off around the world each year. Which means 80,000 or so terrified parents must be biting their lips right about now. A bit of predeparture military training can’t be a bad thing. And the course isn’t only for school-leavers. Regular travellers of all ages can arrange private training days to buff up on their global-survival skills.

I signed up for the first of this summer’s weekly sessions, held in a cafe near Earls Court. We gathered at 0930zulufoxtrot hours: me and eight soon-to-be travellers. There were supposed to be nine, but one has failed to turn up. “No, it’s the 2nd today,” says a tutor to the naughty boy, who’s still snoozing in Brighton. “You’re supposed to be here, now ... No, it’s Wednesday ... No, it’s July

... Okay, shall we see you next week?” If ever there was someone who needs this course ... Let’s hope he makes next week.

THE OPENING SALVO

Lowther-Pinkerton opens the first lecture. It might be a preposterous surname, but he who dares point that out probably wouldn’t win. A decade in the Irish Guards and a decade in the SAS: he’s clearly one concrete cookie. He begins with an army acronym — READE — and you can sense the inner groans from his young, just-finished-their-A-levels audience. But this is a good one. It might have helped me in Amsterdam, and it’s going to help everyone in this room. I’ll bore you with it as well ... you’ll thank me one day.

R stands for recognise. You’re whistling your way down a Colombian street and you see two groups of gunslinging banditos picking a fight with each other. Recognise the danger and go down another street. No problemo, señor.

E is for evaluate. Your travelling companion for the past fortnight suddenly can’t fit a parcel into his luggage any more, just as you arrive at the Colombia-Ecuador border. Would you mind carrying it for him? Being a polite traveller, your natural tendency might be to pop said parcel in your suitcase with a smile and an “I’d be happy to”. But “It’s not mine” won’t wash when customs finds a kilo of Bolivian marching powder in with your undies. Which gets us to A for Avoid. Better to hurt your friend’s feelings than risk a lifetime in a South American jail.

D is for Defuse, or, as Jamie puts it, for when you’re in the poo. This is when the Avoid bit fails — back with those pesky banditos, and this time they’ve decided to pick on you rather than each other. The theory behind the Defuse plan is that you get yourself out of it. Crack a joke, chuck them your wallet, tap-dance (my idea, not Jamie’s) — anything to calm things down.

If that fails, you’re onto E for Extract. You do something to give you enough time to run for it. What that something is, we’ll come to later.