Cut along the dotted line.

Wow.

I've just been watching the body of a 55yr old man being partially dissected on tv. Not a dummy or a waxwork but a real human body of a recently deceased person.

Click me for a picture from the dissection.

He'd donated his body to Dr Gunther von Hagens ("the mad German in the hat ?" as Ray correctly queried) on the grounds that it was used to inform the public in some way about how it worked.

Some details follow on the first of the four programmes - you have been warned.

First the entire surface of the skin was removed leaving it as a floppy pink/grey "skin suit", complete with glove like hands and scalp including hair. Tendons are then sliced off the arm and pulled like puppet strings, making the fingers grasp and flex in a far too realistic manner.

The skull is then sliced open with a circular saw & chisel and the brain prodded with a finger before being sliced on a butchers meat slicer. Finally the spinal cord and connecting tendon is removed from brain to ankle in a single piece and stretched out on the lab table.

Depending on your level of squeamishness you're now either recoiling in horror or fascinated. Trust me, this was "can't look away and not blinking" tv of the highest order and to my mind a huge leap forward in using the box in the corner to educate. Apart from the much reviled/praised autopsy that Dr Gunther did a while ago there has never, to my knowledge, been anything like it shown on television before anywhere in the world.

For more, including photos and animations from the series (yes, including the brain-prod) try the Channel4 microsite