Hi,
Sorry to revive an old thread (And I have almost no connections with the RAF, so I hope you'll excuse the intrusion) but - this has answered a couple of questions for me.
I did wonder why I had absolutely never seen anyone in uniform outside of a military facility, and even that's limited to a couple of hours I spent at Coltishall shooting some video. In fact, I've never seen anyone in military uniform of any kind, anywhere in the UK, ever, the only exception being on TV and the occasional brass band.
Of course this does rather put the dampers on a piece of drama I'm in the process of writing, where we'd arranged things so that our heroine could be seen in No.1s as frequently as possible, and probably much more frequently than is realistic, so as to look as impressive as possible on screen. But to expand on the "we really don't love our military" thread, you only have to look at how frequently they're depicted in film and TV. Other than "Soldier Soldier" and the abysmal "Strike Force", it simply doesn't happen. It's vastly easier to rent American uniform in London if you're costuming a production. Quite disturbing, really.
- Phil