WHEN JACKIE Stallone joined Celebrity Big Brother last year, her alarming appearance seemed like some terrible biblical warning about the effects of too much cosmetic surgery. There was much ghoulish speculation about who she resembled, though my money was on Chuckie, the evil doll from Child’s Play. Whatever you thought about her as a human being, this was extremely distracting.

By definition, we don’t notice the subtler work, though, which can be discreetly effective. If you want to imagine what the late Sid James might have looked like after a successful face-lift, for instance, just check out Alan Sugar on The Apprentice. The question is, can we tell without the help of an expert? Celebrity Surgery: Who’s Had What Done?, ITV1’s groundbreaking new investigative series, set out to show us.

One of the contributors was described as the “News Editor” of Heat magazine. This is an intriguing journalistic concept, like being the opera critic of Smash Hits or the Moscow correspondent of Which Caravan? It made perfect sense, though, since the programme was exactly like a spread from the popular celeb mag, albeit from a rather old issue.

Dr Alex Karidis, cosmetic surgeon to the stars (though one wonders for how much longer, if he goes on making programmes like this), points out the tell-tale signs of scalpel and stapler on the ever-morphing bodies of the rich and famous. He started with breast implants, focusing on Victoria Beckham and Pamela Anderson, both of whose bosoms seem to have got significantly larger, several times, and then, mysteriously, smaller again, or at least more naturally curved.

Much of the show was like one of those spreads in Heat where they add arrows to paparazzi snaps, pointing at possible patches of cellulite on the thigh of some model you’ve never even heard of, and a big red caption reading “ORANGE PEEL!” In fact Dr Karidis went one further, by drawing lines on to an image of Victoria’s cleavage, in case we couldn’t see the unnatural ridge at the top of her breasts for ourselves. He probably added an eye-patch and stubble too, but they will have edited that out.

Experts with titles such as Dr Drew Pinski “Celebrity Psychologist” injected the Botox of scientific respectability by explaining that Lollo Ferrari (54G, weighing 6lb each) was suffering from “dysmorphophobia” — that’s the fear of not having absolutely gigantic breasts, by the way — before her tragic death. There was even a contribution from a Professor of Cultural Studies called Ellis Cashmore, but he may have wandered in from a David Lodge novel by mistake. A professor, no less! And people complain about the standard of documentaries on ITV.

I suppose this dismal schlock invited reflection on the transience of beauty and the wretchedness of human vanity, that’s if you hadn’t switched over, or don’t read Heat regularly. Perhaps something similar was passing through the minds of the Ancient Chinese embalmers as they tried to preserve the body of a dead female aristocrat more than 2,000 years ago.

As Riddle of the Chinese Miracle Mummy (Five) explained, when this Han Dynasty body was unearthed during the Cultural Revolution in 1972, it was in an extraordinary state of preservation. The skin was the right colour, the flesh soft but firm, the joints mobile and there was blood in her veins. Even the internal organs were intact, revealing the cause of death as a gallstone obstructing the entrance to the bowel.

Scientists still aren’t quite sure how this was achieved, although the ancient morticians seem to have gone to enormous lengths to keep air away from the body, and to have stored it in an exceptionally cold tomb. It was also found in water containing high levels of magnesium and salt, though this may have been accidental.

By coincidence, there was an enigmatic 2,000-year-old civilisation on Horizon (BBC Two), too. The Moche of coastal Peru were builders of massive pyramids and irrigation systems and enthusiastic human sacrificers, but their civilisation seems to have crumbled after 30 years of incessant rain, followed by a 30-year drought. Perhaps a few thousand years after the next environmental cataclysm, the archaeologists of the future will find those people who’ve had themselves cryogenically frozen and speculate about the civilisation that did this. And arrows in some future Heat magazine spread will point to their chests and scream IMPLANTS!

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