IT IS the sort of army jape that would be expected to earn a trip to the glasshouse or a severe rebuke from commanding officers. But what began as an amateurish spoof of a spoof could earn a fortune for charity and become the surprise smash hit of the summer.

A group of soldiers who jokingly filmed a version of the video for the hit song (Is This The Way To) Amarillo? were coping yesterday with sudden stardom. And rather than being punished for acting like pop stars instead of privates from the Royal Dragoon Guards serving in Iraq, the Ministry of Defence has promised that none of them will be disciplined.

The MoD has offered the video to Comic Relief, which could use it to raise thousands of pounds for charity. The shakily filmed video ended up bringing one of Britain’s most sensitive computer systems to its knees, crashing the MoD’s e-mail system.

Staff Sergeant Roger Parr, 34, teamed up with colleagues from the Royal Tank Regiment to shoot the home video at their base in al-Faw before e-mailing it back to army friends in London.

The rip-off of the track — re-released last year for Comic Relief with the comedian Peter Kay miming to Tony Christie’s 1971 song — showed Sergeant Parr and friends marching through the base, waving guns, parading bandages and even sitting on portable lavatories.

The video proved so popular at the MoD that it crashed its server because each download took up 52 megabytes — causing an overload on the Army’s e-mail system.

Far from being angry, the military have congratulated Sergeant Parr for his morale-boosting initiative.

The unit is now back in Germany, having returned from its six-month tour of duty in Iraq. Last night a spokesman for the Ministry of Defence played down the disruption that it had caused.

“It’s a bit of morale-boosting fun and shows the British Forces are able to keep their chin up,” he said. All units have now been asked by the MoD to stop forwarding the file.

But Sergeant Parr, from Runcorn, Cheshire, said that the Army’s top brass had enjoyed the video as much as the squaddies. “I heard the video had crashed the MoD’s e-mail system but I was told it had done no harm and that everyone — the lads and everyone else — had loved it. I didn’t get into trouble.”

The soldier, who took on the role of Kay in the video, said that he had been shocked by how well it had gone down.

Speaking from the Dragoon Guards’ German base in Münster, he said: “It’s been crazy, really mad. We are all massive Peter Kay fans — well, who isn’t?

“We were watching his video out in Iraq on satellite TV and all the lads really liked it. The song kind of became a signature for our time out there.

“We just thought one day, ‘Why not let’s go for it and do our own version?’” He said that the Tony Christie song had become an anthem for the regiment over the past few months.

“We got our heads together and got everyone involved in the video. Even the lads with diarrhoea were in the video — they were the ones holding the toilet roll.”

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