That Guy: Pyramid geezer tries a hand at tomb raiding

I have lost a lot of respect for Michael Palin. Photo / Supplied

Opinion

Egypt special: Leigh Hart's Mysterious Planet is a television show set to air on TV One in February. What follows are some extracts from my director's diary for episode five - The Mysteries of Egypt.

Day one
Arrive in Cairo.

Day two
I set about solving the mystery of who built the pyramids - when and why.

Ten minutes later, after my first interview with a local Egyptian historian, I have done this. The Egyptians built them, about 3000 to 5000 years ago, and because they wanted to.

This is a bit of an anti-climax and I now need to explore other avenues to fill up the remaining 50 minutes in this one-hour documentary.

Day three (morning)
Luckily for us an archeological dig is taking place a couple of kilometres from the Great Pyramid of Giza and we have been given permission to film it.

Day three (afternoon)
Drama as I accidently drop a recently unearthed ancient vase, and I am immediately kicked off the dig by the dig manager, Osama. He is very highly strung.

Day four
We visit the temple of Karnak in Luxor. This ancient temple is probably best known as a location in the classic Roger Moore James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me featuring Barbara Bach.

Day five
While trying to get back to Cairo, our car breaks down and we decide to walk through the desert. We get lost for three days but are kept alive by my survival skills. I build a snow cave in the sand and make the crew drink urine I brought with us.

Day eight
We eventually make it back to Cairo and Osama has calmed down enough to allow us back on the dig. I spend the next few days testing the high-tech sand rover camera unit in the desert. This remote-controlled camera on wheels seems to have a mind of its own and repeatedly causes chaos and further breakages on Osama's dig. Once again we are kicked off the site and I spend the rest of the day in Cairo trying to get some new documentary pants (the ones with heaps of pockets on them). It seems that Michael Palin bought most of the doco pants supplies months earlier. Demand is now high and he has pushed the price up for all other documentary filmmakers. I eventually get some, but they are cheap rip-offs and I pay far too much for them. I have lost a lot of respect for Michael Palin, one of my idols, after this experience. I will certainly think twice about working with him again, if I ever get to work with him at all.

Day nine
As we are still not allowed back at the dig I am forced to run with some new theories about ancient Egypt to fill in time.

There have long been rumours that when King Tut's tomb was opened in 1922 by archaeologist Howard Carter a curse was released.

Many people involved with the dig apparently died in mysterious circumstances, yet Carter lived to a ripe old age.

I explore the theory the curse may have skipped a number of generations and manifested itself with All Black great Dan Carter, and the All Blacks themselves, and this is why we haven't won a World Cup since 1987. We begin some family tree research but it becomes too confusing and tedious to continue. We know from history that these sorts of curses are passed down on the mother's side, much like colour blindness and male pattern baldness. The theory is flimsy at best, especially if it turns out Dan isn't even related to Howard and there is a 97.5 per cent chance he isn't. We take a vote and decide to scrap this thread of the documentary.

Day 15
We are allowed back on the dig and the timing couldn't be better as a first dynasty mummy has been unearthed. For once we can be useful. We are able to film the mummy and send the images to our Mysterious Planet labs where the latest digital face reconstruction technology can show us what the person would have looked like 3000 years ago.

Day 17
The facial reconstruction is completed and we are able to download an image of what this person would have looked like.

The mummy seems to have a striking resemblance to actor Gary Busey!

It certainly didn't do my relationship with Osama any favours and once again I was asked to leave the dig.

I have since learnt the mummy is known as the "Gary Busey mummy" and Osama has become the laughing stock within archaeological circles.

Our work is done in Egypt and we catch a plane to Miami to begin preparing for our final episode in which we hope to shed light on one of the greatest mysteries, the Bermuda Triangle.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY