Sharpe began as the first in a series of best-selling novels by the very popular author Bernard Cornwell. Bernard is an admirer of such fictional heroes as Horatio Hornblower and wanted to do an 'army equivalent' selecting for his main character 'Richard Sharpe of the 95th Rifles'. His first novel in the series - Sharpe's Eagle - was an instant success and very soon became the subject of media interest.

I was out with the 95th Rifles and in 1990 met a researcher - again, perhaps by fate at Waterloo in Belgium - who although rather close-mouthed about the project at first, later when we got to know each other he did tell me he was working on creating a 'radio format' for Sharpe. As I'd obviously read the novels I gave him much of what he later termed 'excellent help and advice' so we stayed in touch for a while. The next step was to hear in 1991 that Sharpe had been transferred to a television format: I was as a result of recommendations made to him telephoned at home by Andrew Mollo, a much-respected Art Director and Production Designer. My reply to his questions led to those of others, many subsequent questions by telephone about such things as uniform, equipment, gear, weapons, transport, camps, campaigns: all requiring lots of images to be sent (awkward for a technophobe like me, but I managed it by carrying a barrow-load of my books to the nearest photocopier). It also led to Mr Muir Sutherland, then one of our two Executive Producers on Sharpe to make the now legendary exclamation "We've found a marvellous lunatic...!" which was his very complimentary way of stating that they had discovered someone who was apparently a fount of knowledge on everything they needed to know - I was soon afterwards described as a 'walking encyclopaedia' - about the Peninsula War, the soldiers, Wellington, his French enemies, Sharpe and everything to do with these.

Could I come down to London to listen to a script-reading, meet the Director and meet and teach the principal actors how to be 'British soldiers'...?