Last week a Polish concert pianist called Andre Tchaikowsky made the most unusual stage debut in the history of the British theatre. He appeared opposite the Doctor Who star David Tennant in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamlet — as the skull that Hamlet addresses in the “Alas, poor Yorick” scene. That’s right: when 46-year-old Tchaikowsky died, in 1982, he gave his body to science and bequeathed his skull to the RSC.

Alas, poor Andre. No sooner has his dream come true than he is facing the vagaries of show business: the RSC has decided to leave him out of the production when it opens at the Novello Theatre in London on Wednesday. It seems that all the media attention is making the RSC’s director, Gregory Doran, unhappy and Tennant nervous: no star, after all, wants to be upstaged by a skull.

However brief Andre’s period in the spotlight may have been, he certainly got me thinking: if he can do it, why not me? You can bet that the arts world is going to be offered some strange legacies over the next decade. (At the moment, most bequests to theatre companies consist of dull gifts such as money, the odd urn of ashes and the occasional bottle of champagne.)

Andre has changed the rules of the game. Who wants to be worm food when you can now tread the boards and bathe in the warmth of the footlights?

So I thought I’d follow in his footsteps and try to make a contribution to the cultural life of the nation by offering up . . . my body. (I suspect my dead body has a lot more theatrical potential than my living one.) Some may find the whole idea of your bits and pieces popping up as theatrical props rather tasteless, but I consider it a kind of cultural recycling.

Now if there’s ever a theatre company that could use bits of me, it’s the RSC. Shakespeare’s plays are full of characters that are subjected to plucking and chopping, slicing and dicing. So I call Graeme Williamson, who handles any bequests that come the RSC’s way. He tells me it has “never had anything like Andre’s gift before”.

“Would you please consider using my skull in some future production of Hamlet?” I ask. His reply is cautious: “All legacies must be looked at on their own merit.”

I point out that Titus Andronicus requires three severed hands, two severed heads and a severed tongue — “I’ll give them to you for free! It’s my way of giving something back to the theatre.”

Williamson laughs and says: “Anything is possible” — but he doesn’t say yes.

Okay, well maybe there’s room on the British stage for my teeth. One of the most famous human props of all time was the dentures of Joe Orton’s dead mum, which starred in a 1966 production of his play Loot.

Having heard that a new production of Loot is about to open at the Tricycle Theatre in London, I call the director Sean Holmes and offer my teeth. “Thanks for the offer, but you’re too late,” he says. “We’ve already got our teeth for the production.”

You don’t make it in show business — dead or alive — without a bit of old-fashioned hustle, so I ask the people at the Tricycle if I can send pictures of my body for future consideration. “Who knows, you might need a corpse for a production of Rope.”

“No, thanks,” says the bored voice at the end of the line.

Later I make a similar pitch to the National Theatre. “What about my eyes for King Lear or Oedipus? Surely the National’s stage is full of people getting blinded, stoned, buggered and castrated? Come on — you could use a dead guy.”

“Sorry. Don’t call us; we’ll call you,” says a spokesman.

Rejection is often the lot of the actor, and so it is for the working corpse. When I offer my severed head to the lady at the Royal Opera House, for future productions of Salome, there is a deathly silence at the other end of the phone. And then a click.

I’m beginning to lose heart when it occurs to me I could find a more modest kind of fame if I donate my body to science. Dr Gordon Findlater of Edinburgh University tells me he gets around 30 bodies a year for students to dissect. He is rather horrified by my suggestion that I could be paid — or if not paid, then at least have a blue plaque erected somewhere that celebrates my life and times. “Oh no, we couldn’t do that sort of thing.”

Maybe you could mention me in a medical textbook. Silence. “Okay, doctor,” I say, “how about I donate the lower half of my body to you and give the upper half to the world of the arts?”

“Sorry, we can only accept the entire corpse — not bits and pieces. It’s all or nothing.”

How am I to find posthumous fame? Then it strikes me. The one sure way of being a celebrity corpse is to donate your body to Gunther von Hagens’s Body Worlds exhibition, which is famous for its frank displays of human anatomy. So I talk to von Hagens’s wife, Angelina Whalley, who is also the designer of the exhibition. Result! She can’t wait for me to sign on the dotted line.

Can I give her a few parts and leave some for others? “Yes, of course,” she tells me. “A man gave us his amputated leg for the show. And he’s not even dead.”

For those who agree to plastination — as von Hagens’s chemical process to preserve the body is known — it’s a form of being in the theatre. One American donor has said: “I’ve always wanted to travel and see the world.” The fact that she would be seeing the world dead didn’t bother her.

Whalley concedes some people leave their bodies because they want the “attention and feeling of being famous”. When I say I’d have to talk to my agent about securing top billing, she warns me all donations must be anonymous.

If no one wants my skull, my eyes, my teeth or my head, maybe I could get rid of my hair. Brian Peters is a theatrical wig designer who works for Angels, the London costume company, and he’s made wigs for everyone from Laurence Olivier to the comedian Peter Kay.

I tell him that when I die, I want to donate my hair. “What a good idea,” he says. “Do you know that you can get between £40 and £50 for an ounce of human hair?” Thank heavens for that: I’ll be able to leave my children some money, after all.

The only thing that puts me off is the thought of winding up as a Marie Antoinette concoction on Elton John’s head at one of his fancy-dress parties. Frankly, I’d rather be worm food than a fop’s wig.

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