Man volunteers for mummification

A dead man has become the first person in more than 3,000 years to be mummified like Tutankhamun.

Alan Billis - who died in January from lung cancer aged 61 - volunteered to have his body put through a number of special techniques used by ancient Egyptians to mummify pharaohs, which included taking out his organs and sterilising his corpse before re-packing it with bags of linen to restore its appearance.

The former taxi driver's wife Jan joked to the Daily Mirror newspaper: "I'm the only woman in the country with a mummy for a husband.

"I went to see him after he had been mummified, but I didn't want them to unwrap the cloth and let me see his face in case I couldn't cope with it."