SOLDIERS showed off their musical skills at an event aimed at forging friendships.

The Corps of Drums of the Green Howards, based at Warminster, Wiltshire, went to Middlesbrough to perform to an invited audience last night.

Among those present at the event, at Stockton Road Territorial Army Centre, were local mayors, MPs, police, headteachers and careers advisors.

As well as entertaining people with their music, the drummers - along with fife and bugle players - showed their fighting prowess with weapons and armoured vehicle displays.

Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Roberts, commanding officer of the battalion, gave a talk, and guests were invited to view a photographic display of aspects of the regiment over the past 50 years, including pictures of the Middlesbrough footballer Wilf Mannion, who served with the Green Howards during the Second World War.

A spokesman for the drummers said: "The reception was to help cement the friendship between ourselves and our traditional recruiting area, and to introduce influential local people to the realities of life in the modern infantry."