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For the layman it may seem almost incredible that so full a picture can be built up on so slight a foundation, but modern methods of laboratory research now enable archaeologists to speak with an assurance that would have astonished their predecessors. Lack of space prevents us from describing the complicated and laborious methods of enquiry employed by the Professors and we can only summarise their conclusions. The occupant of the grave was, it appears, a local chieftain, middle-aged, five foot seven in height and markedly dolichocephalic. He was married, but not happy in his home life, suffered from stomach ulcers and an impacted wisdom tooth and died as a result of a sharp blow over the left ear. He had probably fallen on his head as a child and was certainly devoted to his dog, a cross-bred mastiff eight hands in height with a badly damaged tail…
This chieftain of the Draynflete Culture, the Via Hernia and Professors Spiggot and Hackenbacker were all products of Osbert Lancaster's wicked sense of humour, but truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction. On 1 August 1984 the appropriately named Andy Mould pulled from a bog in Cheshire a 2000-year-old foot. The police handed the matter over to the archaeologists. Five days later a complete body, now known as Pete Marsh or Lindow Man, was in their hands. How would Lancaster have reacted to the news that one day in March or April in the first century A.D. this tormented soul was stunned by two blows to the head, stabbed in the chest, garrotted and had his throat cut?
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