The Big Monster Dig (C4): THE wow factor was all too apparent as the experts in Channel 4's answer to Time Team set off on the trail of a dinosaur that lived 140 million years ago.

"Wow, just look at the size of these vertebrae," said one. "Oh, wow, now that is really lovely," enthused another. "Oh, shut up and get on with it," said this unwowed reviewer.

We learnt that one man had spent 500 hours cleaning up a piece of rock to reveal his dino discovery. At times, it felt as though I'd spent as long watching these enthusiastic dino-hunters investigating the bones Luke found at the bottom of a cliff near Hastings on the Sussex coast.

He wanted the Big Monster Dig team to find out more out the iguanodon, the species he'd found, and identify which type it was. A worthy challenge but, dearie me, the two days they spent looking and learning hardly made for viewing that kept you on the edge of your seat.

At the end of it all, Luke was told he'd discovered a type of iguanodon with a name I can neither pronounce nor spell - and that it was the oldest recorded one in the world. Presenter Lucy Taylor wanted to call it Luke's Iggy, but was told by the spoilsport experts that this would break international regulations under which dino-hunters operate.

Luke had discovered 20 per cent of the skeleton already, and Lucy gave volunteers of all ages hard hats and told them to search for more. This was like looking for a needle in a haystack but not as exciting. Dino-expert Dave Martill got the best of the deal, being packed off on Eurostar to Brussels to look at an iguanodon in a museum there.

Professor John Howell, described as a stone man who "knows his rocks", was left digging for dinos. Finds had to be cleaned, using dentists' tools to grind away and separate dino bits from the rock. This seemed a very tedious job and when Lucy told us, "I have a night's bone cleaning ahead", I was glad I wasn't going to have to watch.

She had a special treat in store for John - she made him dangle on a rope from the cliffs, 120ft above the waves. His task was to search the cliff face for more bits of Iggy, and to discover what the place would have been like when dinosaurs ruled the world.

The next day, the team called in specialist sandshifters. "That sounds interesting," said Lucy, although I found it difficult to agree with her. They used high-powered blowers to clear sand and reveal some very large footprints. This enabled them to calculate the speed at which the dinosaur was moving. Remember stride length and gravity equal speed, you never know when that might come in handy.

It meant that Iggy was an ambler, plodding along at 4km an hour, not much quicker than us but considerably faster than an hour in the company of the Big Monster diggers felt.