Spontaneous human combustion.

well, youve got to admit, the subject has always been handled by newspapers like our "National Enquirer" and all night wacko radio. The actual evidence is fairly limited an is relatively arcane.

I only learned about this from a series of papers written by an organic chemist I know who'd made a "Hobby" out of unique organic compounds that come from mammal bodies. He did a whole thing on **** like cadaverine, putrescine, and these diazo "triamine", compounds that can actually self ignite.

I don't know anything about the National Enquirer, but SHC is a phenomenon on the fringes of science.

The wick effect is a lot less sensational that SHC. Charles Dickens thought so when he wrote Bleak House.

The wick effect, as I understand it, is about how clothes can act like the wick of a candle, with the melted body fat working as the tallow. But how can body fat melt in the first place?
Prof Ford seems to think the wick effect cant account for SHC. He seems to think that the clothes would burn up long before the body was properly ignited, and would not be sufficient to burn up everything, even bone.

When it comes to the subject of SHC and the fact that it is generally the more 'alternative' news agencies who report on it, that might be because this isn't a high priority issue. It's rare, and it's got little potential for winnings. Cracking the mystery satisfies curiosity, but not much else. For most people, not knowing if it's possible or not is completely fine, so it gets left alone...

In the documentary I saw, the wick effect body discovered part way by police was a murder victim, and the murderer had used some accelerant to try to dispose of the body.

From what I understand, they tried to use alcohol to make pigs fat burn. They had soaked the fat in alcohol for weeks, then wrapped it in alcohol soaked cloth and lit it on fire. The fat wouldn't burn completely, though the cloth went up.
Then they tried it with acetone, and the result was combustion which produced a very similar result to that which is found in the cases that are reported as SHC.

Sadly I can't find a video of the original version by the Bobs.