Wanted: volunteer to become mummy on TV
By Arifa Akbar - 4:00 AM Tuesday Jan 12, 2010 -
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/television/news/article.cfm?c_id=339&objectid=10619664After the terminally ill person is turned into a mummy, the film-makers want to display the body in a museum.
They've had the first televised autopsy and the first on-screen assisted suicide. The latest wheeze to challenge the British public's attitudes to dying comes from Channel 4, which is appealing to the terminally ill to find someone to donate their body to be mummified for a reality television show - then displayed in a museum for two years.
Among all the sobering possibilities of how to spend your last days is one offered by a film production company on behalf of Channel 4. It is advertising in spirit magazines for volunteers in search of celluloid immortality.
The ad reads: "We are currently keen to talk to someone who, faced with the knowledge of their own terminal illness and all that it entails, would nonetheless consider undergoing the process of ancient Egyptian embalming."
The proposal from production firm Fulcrum TV has received development funds from Channel 4. Documentary-makers are working with a scientist who claims to have unlocked the secrets of the mummification process .....