Ruby Wax Meets ... Jim Carrey (BBC1); Mummies That Made Themselves (Channel 4): THE jury is still out on which was more frightening - American film funny man Jim Carrey out of control or the nightmare-inducing thought and sight of Buddhist priests who embalmed themselves while still alive.

But, as they say in the business, that's entertainment - no matter how much it makes your skin crawl which, in the case of Carrey, can be quite a lot. Like that other stand-up comedian turned movie actor Robin Williams, he is rarely serious. Encouraged and egged on by interrogator Ruby Wax, there was never any chance that she'd get an in-depth interview like Parkinson.

The method in her madness was, presumably, that somewhere between trashing the hotel room and doing the interview flopped over Wax lying on the floor, he'd let slip the secrets of his comic genius. I'm not certain that he did.

We learnt in passing that he lived in a tent as a child, his mother made up diseases, his father went "a little off the rails" after being fired and young Jim enjoyed an intimate relationship with a green rug. That was when he wasn't gurning, doing silly voices, grappling with Wax or, in his piece de resistance, attempting to pull off a tablecloth and leave the crockery and cutlery in place.

The trick were horribly wrong, leaving broken cups and tea all over the carpet. Carrey did have the good grace to look embarrassed. "Let me clean that up, I feel really bad," he said as Wax told him to leave it as they'd paid £450 for the room in the posh London hotel.

Carrey's manic energy was in direct contrast to the more peaceful life of the Buddhist monks in North Japan, who mummified themselves while still alive. Only relatively recently has scientific investigation unearthed the possible methods they used to leave themselves perfectly preserved. A temple curator thought one of the priests had "a very warm and friendly face". The skeletal face and bony hands poking out from the rich red priest's robes were more likely to induce nightmares, I'd have thought.

The usual way to make a mummy is to remove all the fats and fluids, then treat the corpse to stop decay. These Japanese monks did all that while they were alive, without the need to remove any internal organs. The process involved a torturing of the body to perfect the mind, and took several years.

This self-mummification involved a strict diet, eating only nuts and seeds, and exhausting physical trials. After three years of that, the monk cut out all food apart from the bark and pine of trees. Then he stopped exercising and began chanting.

Finally, the monks were entombed alive in a underground pit, with no food or water, and only enough room to sit in the lotus position. Every day they would ring a bell. When the bell wasn't heard, the other monks knew they were dead.

How, the experts asked (although I wished they hadn't), did these starving monks stop bacteria and maggots eating them after death? Simple - by drinking tea brewed from the same tree sap used to make the lacquer the Japanese put on bowls and using water from a spring containing enough arsenic to kill a man. After death, the poison stopped the body decomposing.

All of this was fascinating, if grisly, stuff. But not, to be honest, half as gruesome as the sight of a face-pulling Carrey demolishing a hotel room.

Published: 29/07/2003