David Best, a 28 year-old Oldham man hoping to relax away from the stresses of his factory supervisor job during a ten-day holiday in Egypt, was seriously patronised by a student of Egyptology - seven years his junior - before the pair had even cleared passport control at Cairo International Airport yesterday morning.

Describing his ordeal from the poolside of the city's Sheraton Hotel today, Best was still visibly shaken. "I'd only just joined the queue when I heard a real loud sigh behind me," Best recalls, "and this guy just said - sort of to no-one in particular - 'Oh, it is always this bad' and started fanning himself all dramatically with one of those wide-brimmed hats. You know, like the one Indiana Jones has."

Best continued, "Even though I tried to avoid eye-contact with him, and didn't say a word, he just kept talking vaguely in my direction". Mr Best went on to describe how his assailant, later identified as 21-year old Martin Holden of Swansea University's MA in Egyptology, had given him a number of pieces of advice, each of them completely unprovoked and ranging in subject from the correct passport control queue to stand in, to what price 'experienced travellers' would pay for a taxi ride into the city centre and a long list of archaeological sites that he 'absolutely must' visit. This last topic was included in the seven minute near-monologue despite the fact that Mr Best at time of writing has no plans to visit any sites of historical interest during his holiday.

Mr Holden also attempted to give Mr Best a lesson in basic Arabic, and was only foiled by the hasty retrieval of an iPod from Mr Best's hand luggage.

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