It’s not often that a negative becomes a positive for tourism to Cape Town, but when the BA flight from London to Cape Town, with celebrity Gary Barlow on-board, had to turn back due to a large number of the cabin crew becoming ill, the story made the Saturday issue of the UK Daily Mail.

Barlow was a member of Take That band with Robbie Williams, is a singer-songwriter and record producer, and is an X Factor UK judge.  He Tweeted “Well I made it to Cape Town. It was worth all the drama. Beautiful place” when he landed in Cape Town on Saturday, and soon thereafter he posted the photograph of himself on Table Mountain, with Table Bay in the background. He followed up the Tweet with another: “Wow, so many of you have been here. In future I’ll ask for tricks and tips before I travel #gbarmy”.

Cape Town could not have wished for a better endorsement of its beauty, the Tweets with his photograph going to close to 1,4 million of Barlow’s Twitter followers, and the article in the Daily Mail used the Twitpic too, as well as another beautiful shot of Table Mountain, with the caption: “Stunning: Table Mountain in Cape Town is an iconic landmark and is visited by people from all over the world”, the newspaper having 4,5 million readers, according to UK Newspaper Marketing Agency figures for 2011. Barlow is in Cape Town to shoot a commercial for Marks & Spencer.

Fifteen BA crew members became ill during the flight on Wednesday, and the captain had to turn the plane around and headed back to London 2½ hours after take-off.  No passengers were affected, and the cause of the illness is not yet known.

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter: @Whale Cottage