Is this the way to Army-rillo?

There's Peter Kay being followed by soldiers in desert combat gear and singing as a soldier brandishes a weapon ... only closer inspection reveals it's not the jovial northern comic but Staff Sergeant Roger Parr and his mates from the Royal Dragoon Guards tank regiment currently serving in Iraq.

Sgt Parr and his friends have produced their own version of Kay's No 1 hit video Is This The Way To Amarillo? However the spoof, which they have called Is This the Way To Armadillo? has proved so popular it caused Ministry of Defence computers to crash, including those at Britain's secret strike command headquarters in Buckinghamshire.

So many officers downloaded the four-minute 52 megabyte file that the system - designed to withstand attacks by hackers, came to a halt under the strain. Computer screens controlling British air defences and warplanes around the world are reported to have gone blank for five hours.

"We couldn't believe it when the screens went blank," said one RAF officer at the MoD in Whitehall. "After several hours of staring at nothing we went to the pub and then went home early. But it would have been extremely serious if some big operation had been on the go."

Back at Al Faw the film, shot on a squaddie's videocam, is being seen as a huge morale booster for the regiment.

An Army source said: "It's brilliant. It's one of the funniest videos I have ever seen and a credit to the soldiers who made it. The spoof is of superb quality and deserves to be shown on TV. The squaddie who is the star is the exact double of Peter Kay."

The MoD has ordered units worldwide to delete emails with the video attachment.

An MoD spokesman added: "Soldiers maintaining their morale on operations is always important. The fact it proved so popular and caused the computer system to crash was unfortunate. But operations were not affected and all is up and running again."