In ancient Egypt, when somebody died – somebody like this tomato here (run with it, it makes even less sense in a moment…) – they were buried in a pit in the desert.

Now, the desert was very hot and dry, and they also contained a lot of salt. Which is good, because normally a dead tomato (er… that’s ‘dead body’, right?) ends up looking like this:

…after not very long at all. It begins to rot and decay, really very quickly.

But the salt dries the body out, and it also kills off bacteria. So dead fruit (and bodies) stays remarkably… er… fresh. Fresh, but still dead, of course. This process of drying out and sterilising fruit bodies was to form the basis of making mummies.

Here we are in ancient Egypt, circa 2600BC. The little-known pharaoh Gaz-El Top has, sadly, snuffed it.

Quite reasonably, he’s worried that it might hurt. Fred and Gail quite reasonably contend that he’s dead, and won’t feel a thing.

Which part of Gaz-El’s body has started to rot first, do you think?

His feet? No, don’t be distracted by their historic pong, it’s his innards.

So, out come his liver, kidneys…

He doesn’t look too happy about this, but then, he’s dead. So really, it’s not a worry.

Out come the spleen, intestines, and heart.

Oh, no, hang on – stick the heart back in. The ancient Egyptians believed that the heart was where a person’s personality is kept. So while most of the gooey rotting innards were removed, the heart was left in the body.

Everything else was shoved in a jar, packed in salt, and buried alongside the body.

The next thing to do was to remove the body’s brain. Shouldn’t take long with Gareth.

For this, the ancient Egyptians used a hook, which was shoved up through the nose and wiggled around to smush the brain up. The hook was then used to drag the brain out through the nose. Sorry if you’re reading this while eating your tea, by the way.

No, Fred, you’re supposed to do that to the body, not the spare skull that’s lying around. Honestly, you can’t get the staff these days.

Next, the body was packed with salt, left to dry out for seventy days, then painted with resin and wrapped in a thousand metres of linen bandages.

And there you go! After all that, your mummy will stay well-preserved for a few thousand years.

That’s how you can look after your mummy.