Trailing the tomb raiders

11 April 2012

Is it God or the Devil who decrees that piles of Easter eggs should appear in every supermarket in the land just as Lent commences, to tempt us from the path of low-calorie righteousness?

Either way, the Resurrection of Jimmy Jesus is certainly going to dominate the TV schedules during the next few days, so to counter that mawkish blend of crucifact and crucifixion, I shall invite my friends (yes, I do have some) over for our annual game of Biblical Easter charades.

First, I'll jump up to head an imaginary football and ask them to guess who I am ("that's Jesus going up for the cross"), then nibble at my palms ("Jesus biting his nails"), then don a wig and take out a cigarette ("Sarah lit up on a Camel"), before injecting myself with an imaginary syringe ("Mary Magdalene was stoned").

And finally, to bring the house down (not literally like Samson, just metaphorically), I'll perform my Easter urinary miracle, by turning wine into water.

When Rory McGrath's Bloody Britain (Discovery) introduced us to "the Resurrectionists" last night, I initially assumed they were some sort of Easter-obsessed religious sect.

However, the name turned out to be a grim euphemism for London's grave robbers, who made a killing in the early 19th century by digging up freshly buried corpses and selling them to surgeons who were desperate to increase their knowledge of anatomy, but had no body to help them.

In this darkly fascinating programme, McGrath explained that although these body snatchers were officially "a breed damned by society", they were quietly encouraged in their degrading trade by medical men who wanted the cadavers for research, in much the same way (I suppose) that beagles are used nowadays in cosmetics laboratories.

I consider that to be an equally degrading practice, by the way, because those mutts look ridiculous with eye-liner, blusher and lipstick on, but hey, that's Laboratoire Garnier for you.

Wandering through a graveyard full of headstones carved with sentimental inscriptions like "not dead, just sleeping" (which in my opinion is a rotten trick to play on someone), McGrath showed us just how simple it was to dig up a body a couple of centuries ago.

Apparently, corpses were frequently buried only six inches deep in those days, and with the help of historian Ruth Richardson (and a couple of silent wooden shovels), he'd soon exhumed what looked like a blow-up plastic sex doll from a cardboard coffin, and bundled it into a wheelbarrow, ready to be sold to the highest bidder.

So easy and lucrative was this trade that relatives of the deceased often kept the corpse at home until putrefaction had set in, or boobytrapped the coffin with loaded pistols, and anyone caught robbing a grave was liable to be shackled and horsewhipped all the way from Holborn to St Giles Circus. How times have changed, because nowadays there are some chaps in the West End who have to pay good money to get specialist treatment like that.

So far, McGrath's attitude to the Resurrectionists had been one of amused detachment (because although their profession was revolting, it undoubtedly benefited medical science), but things took a darker turn when he spoke of Bishop and Williams.

Around 1830, this pair decided to cut out the middle man (the grim reaper) from their trade by drugging and drowning healthy live humans, whose bodies they then sold to doctors like Sir Astley Cooper (president of the College of Surgeons), no questions asked, at some eight guineas apiece.

After supplying several hundred (perhaps even a thousand), their scam was finally exposed and they were sentenced to be hanged and dissected, although a more fitting end would surely have been the fate I've arranged for myself, courtesy of Sainsbury's butchery department.

After my demise, they're going to dismember me, wrap the bits in clingfilm (labelled "scrag end" or "rib"), put them in their deep freeze and sell them to customers in the London area. That way, I reckon I can continue to leave a funny taste in my readers' mouths, long after I'm dead.

When it comes to history, give me the wit and enthusiasm of Rory McGrath or Terry Jones over that academic bitch from hell David Starkey any day.

Despite its modest budget, this series contains some strikingly original music (Richard Attree) and stunning animation (Darkside), and beneath the presenter's humour lies a serious purpose; which is important, because as I was saying just last week to my old friend, chat-show host Russell Harty, television nowadays is woefully lacking in serious, gutsy, intelligent fare.

Yes, I know Russell is dead, but whenever I'm cutting a swathe across the country, I try to stop off at Giggleswick Church graveyard for a chat; and as I walked over his grave, I remarked to him that I was probably the last man he ever expected to find on top of him.

He didn't reply but, as always, I kept him posted with all the latest media gossip. Such as how ironic it is that, while he only died the once, there are now chat-show hosts like Jonathan Ross who are dying on a weekly basis, only to be resurrected, then die again.

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