Why the cannon was called Sweet Lips.

AS the BBC embarks on its Cracking Crime day of programmes, someone should report the case of the two men who go around digging up football pitches.

Tony Pollard and Neil Oliver have an excuse for such vandalism - they're archaeologists. The pitch in question is in Newark, and they call in the excavators as they investigate The Siege of Newark.

This is a programme that takes the archaeological digging from Time Team, substitutes two fit men for two fat ladies, then adds lots of fascinating, but ultimately useless, historical facts. Unlike some of the artefacts unearthed, there's nothing remotely original about the format.

Still, you do learn about lines of circumvallation (something to do with banks and ditches) as well as not to stand in front of a cannon while you're loading it and holding a lighted taper (which seems logical when you think about it).

We also learn why one particular cannon was known as Sweet Lips - it was named after a prostitute from Hull "because she goes bang, bang, bang".

The third siege of Newark lasted six months as royalists held out against roundheads. "The smell of pus must have been unbelievable," says one of our archaeological campaigners in a statement you wouldn't hear in a school history lesson.

Nothing could disguise the fact that they didn't actually find very much, despite regular cries of "this really is quite exciting" and "amazing" echoing around the excavation sites involved in one of the key sieges of the English Civil War.

Even the grand-sounding Queen's Sconce, described by one of our experts as "one of the most impressive siege works left in the country", was little more than a mound of grassed earth.

The whole thing was "absolutely horrific" for the people of Newark, who resorted to eating their horses and dogs when supplies ran out. The worst Pollard and Oliver have to suffer is finding that the milk for their breakfast tea has gone "off" after camping in a field overnight.