Danny Howell writes:
“I’m sure there will be some readers of this blog who will remember a television series called Soldier Soldier. It was, for want of a better description, “an army soap opera”. It started broadcasting in June 1991 and ran for seven series until 1997. Actors Robson Green and Jerome Flynn starred in the first five episodes, and a song they sang in the fourth series, a rendition of Unchained Melody (which had been a hit for the Righteous Brothers way back in 1965) proved popular with tv viewers. Simon Cowell pursued Green and Flynn and they signed a recording contract with him. Their version of Unchained Melody, produced by Mike Stock and Matt Aitken, reached No.1 in the British singles chart and was not only the fastest selling single in UK chart history at that time, but was also the biggest selling single of 1995. The ‘b’ side of the single was White Cliffs Of Dover.
Prior to production of the first series of Soldier Soldier, and it must have been late 1989 or in 1990, I was the Deputy Curator of the Dewey Museum in Warminster, and I was contacted by someone from the world of tv drama working in advance of the series. They told me the series would be about soldiers and their interaction with a town with a garrison or an army base. Warminster was not going to be the actual setting or a location for filming – it was, as it turned out, set somewhere in the Midlands with no real place name being mentioned.”
“The reason I was contacted was because they wanted answers to questions about a town having an army base. They also particularly wanted to know what the style of the street signs in Warminster was like, what colours were the tourist information signs here and what was the design and colours of items of street furniture, like lamp posts, street benches and litter bins, in Warminster. They asked me to take some photos and send the photos to them, which I did. They also wanted to get copies of posters of military connected events in Warminster – things like quiz nights and bingo at the United Services Club, playgroup activities near the Army Married Quarters, etc. I suppose they wanted these to decorate the film sets where necessary. They wanted any thing to give the filming sets a touch of reality. They did specify that any posters or copies of posters I sent them were not to have dates too big or too visible on them. Once I had sent these things off I never heard from the producers again. I’ve no idea if anything I told them was used by them or whether any of the posters were portrayed. I didn’t watch any of the Soldier Soldier series. It was produced by Central Television.”