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COOKING has Nigella Lawson, gardening has Charlie Dimmock and poetry has Daisy Goodwin. Now archaeology is the next subject to receive a glamorous TV makeover, thanks to an outspoken 30-year-old blonde presenter dubbed 'the female Indiana Jones'.
But whereas viewers are happy to watch a domestic goddess at work in the kitchen, Dr Dorothy King is already provoking a backlash in a profession still regarded as one of the last bastions of male dominance. Her undiplomatic views on the controversy surrounding the Elgin Marbles have seen her dismissed in archaeological circles as 'not a serious academic' and ridiculed as 'a rich amateur with a flag to wave'.
King is the secret weapon of the usually silent lobby resisting the Greek government's campaign to bring the sculptures back to Athens in time for next summer's Olympics. Twenty-three weeks pregnant and sporting designer outfits and Jimmy Choo shoes, she is far removed from the popular image of archaeologists as white- haired professors and from TV incarnations such as Tony Robinson and Bill Oddie.
King is having talks with both the BBC and Channel 4 about a potentially lucrative TV career and even...