We often say we know something like the back of our hand, yet our skin is one of the least-studied organs of the body.
Tonight's Horizon goes on safari in this extraordinary world and introduces some of your strange fellow-travellers: not just the bacteria which are as numerous on your person as people on earth; but demodex, a strange worm-like animal which lives among your eyelashes; the dust mite which lives off the skin you shed: and the head louse which creeps in a million British scalps. The programme does more than scratch the surface; it shows that our lives depend on this strange ecology on our skins. Fortunately for us all the perfumes or detergents of Arabia will not wash away the life that lives on man.