Alan JohnstonI’m going to break the first rule of blogging and assume you know who Alan Johnston is - if you don’t then please feel free to click the link from his name to find out more about him.

He has been a man used to informing the public of the news in various war-torn parts of the world, but in 2007 he actually was the news for a great part of the year.

In March he was kidnapped and kept hostage for 117 days, with very little information being released regarding either who was holding him or what state he was in personally.