The programme about the ice man and the ensuing "curse" I mentioned yesterday is on Discovery Science +1 channel tonight at 9pm.
I thought you meant him: http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/scots-drug-boss-jamie-iceman-2870471
Ah, Otzi. The Italian Lakes is my favourite part of the world and we've spent several holidays there. Before we had the kids, and had the pleasure of going on holiday before the prices are hiked during the holiday season, we were over in Malcesine on Lake Garda and booked ourselves on a few trips, one of which was up in the mountains to Balzano. Otzi, of course, is the main attraction there, so we all went to the museum to see him and learn all about it. As we were out of school holiday season the rest of the people on the trip with us were a fair bit older and, unusually for Lake Garda, mainly British rather than German. The tour guide had told us a little of Otzi on the way up there. We stopped at a few little villages on the way that were more like Austrian villages than Italian. It really was beautiful up there. Anyway, we got to the museum and, whilst there was plenty to look at, it was mainly centred around Otzi. As we got to the room where he was, all the other artefacts and bits of clothing, etc were on display and there was a waxwork figure of how Orzi would have looked and dressed based upon the findings, to add to the experience. Otzi himself is kept in very specific conditions, as you would expect, to prevent the body simply rotting away, so to view him you had to queue up and take a turn of looking through the viewing window. It was a slightly odd experience, but fascinating nevertheless, and you did get the sense of the history when you saw the body. When we got back on the bus there were various conversations about him, as people were obviously as interested as we were at having visited the museum. It's not an easy place to get to, so chances like this are unlikely to come along very often. Anyway, this old dear piped up something like "well I don't think the body was real". Someone challenged her and asked why not, because the story was compelling, there was video evidence that we had just seen, it was well documented and, well, we had all just seen the body. So this old dear says "well he just wouldn't look as well preserved as that, even allowing for the ice". Again, someone asked her to elaborate, as the body was quite mummified and resembled a kebab, more than a human being. So the old dear went on about how his skin wasn't even decomposed, he had his beard, his clothing looked new, etc. It was then that we realised that this old lass had travelled to Italy on holiday, booked a trip to Balzano, spent several hours winding up the Italian mountains, gone into the museum, gone up to the first or second floor, gone into the 'Otzi' room, seen the waxwork and presumed that was the body! The queue of people waiting to look through a small viewing window obviously passed her by! Biglil - I bought a nice book from the museum all about him if you want to borrow it. I keep trying to impress the kids with it, but so far no interest!
I finally watched the programme, mate. As interesting as it was, to try and link eight deaths out of the hundreds of people who have worked on the project these past twenty years plus is, for me, very tenuous. Either that, or I'm in a far more dangerous discipline than I ever realised!
