THE desire to discover who we are and where we come from has never been stronger.

Thanks in no small part to programmes such as Who Do You Think You Are? it seems as though we are all hoping to unearth some unusual facts about our ancestors.

The problem with Who Do You Think You Are? is that is stands and falls solely on its subject matter.

Last week's episode featuring Robert Lindsay was enthralling, thanks in no small part to the actor's emotional response to discovering about his grandfathers' First World War exploits.

Sadly, Colin Jackson was nowhere near as animated as he traced his family line.

For someone who was so explosive on the athletics track he was really surprisingly laid back about his family history.

Every revelation was greeted with little more than an oh really' to such an extent that you were left at the end feeling as though the programme had been wasted on him.

As someone who has several friends ploughing through websites, library archives and following numerous dead ends to determine their own family trees it was galling to see how much work - and help - Colin Jackson got.

He clearly didn't realise how many thousands of people would love to have a backroom team at their disposal to unearth missing links and to gain access to various treasure troves of information.

I know you can't change someone's personality - and it's not Colin's fault he wasn't as moved as we would have liked but when a programme is so dependent upon its subject matter, perhaps the selection process needs looking at.