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The former Playboy Playmate and Baywatch star Donna D'Errico has had to cancel plans to discover the remains of Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat Lost in Showbiz has long been an admirer of the world of biblical archaeology, but has equally been nagged by the feeling it lacks a certain glamour, the glamour that only a former Playboy Playmate and star of Baywatch can bring to proceedings. It looks at the work of Israel Finkelstein – Jacob M Alkow professor of the archaeology of Israel in the bronze age and iron ages at Tel Aviv University – and finds itself thinking: "While I'm impressed by the controversy you generated by suggesting the monumental structures of Megiddo were built not by King Solomon but by the reviled King Ahab, I'd be more impressed still if you were a blonde woman with enormous breasts." So it thrilled to the news that Donna D'Errico, former star of Baywatch, September 1995 Playboy Playmate of the Month and ex-wife of Mötley Crüe guitarist Nikki Sixx, was planning to embark on an expedition to Mount Ararat in Turkey to find the remains of Noah's Ark. "This has been a dream of mine ever since I was nine or 10," she said. No word as to whether she tends to the processual or post-processual view of biblical archeology as either purely objective and scientific or a more subjective discipline that bears the influence of structuralism, but who needs all that boring stuff when you've got enthusiasm ("I went to Catholic school and did projects on the ark") and a camera crew filming you for an eight-part reality show. But alas, it was not to be: LiS learns this week that D'Errico's trip to Mount Ararat has been cancelled after her hiking partner received death threats and her guide, a local Kurd, "relentlessly attempted to talk [her] out of going" then eventually quit as well. Biblical archaeology will now have to struggle on without D'Errico's comely influence and wisdom, as she – nothing if not a renaissance woman – picks up the pieces of her shattered childhood fantasy and moves on to fresh challenges: "I am working on a cooking show, which is also a lifetime dream," she says. Alexis Petridis
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