BBC reporter Alan Johnston knows tough.

While being held for 114 days last year by Gaza militants, he was isolated, forced to make videos while strapped in a bomb vest, beaten and threatened with execution.

But Alan says those Gaza strongmen would be no match for the toughies from his native Scotland.

At the recent Edinburgh Book Fair, Johnson said that, after he was freed, he was confronted in a Scottish pub by some unimpressed patrons.

"They pulled me aside and warned that I might have lasted four months out there," Johnston said, "but wouldn't  last four minutes with them."

According to a report in The Independent (fourth item), Johnston had to agree.

Johnston was at the fair to promote his new book, "Kidnapped,"

Johnston told the audience that his "luck ran out" that day in March when he was abducted, but that he was lucky that his ordeal lasted months, not years.