Professional pub sign painter Nick Hallard has completed his strangest order ever – for a bar in downtown Kabul.

Nick was astonished to get a call from the US Embassy in Afghanistan's capital.

The American GIs guarding the diplomatic headquarters wanted a sign for their drinking den, jokingly nicknamed the Duck and Cover, so Nick painted a duck wearing a tin hat.

It was even more bizarre than his sign for the Broadwater pub in Broadwater Road, Worthing, where he sparked controversy by painting former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott being ducked in the village pond.

Nick, 34, of Downlands Avenue, Worthing, said: “A pub sign for the US embassy in Kabul is absolutely the most bizarre thing I have done.

“The chap who commissioned the Duck and Cover sign got my details from the internet.

“He is actually the bar manager of their equivalent of our NAAFI.

“They've built the bar in the middle of the encampment, which is a small fortress made from perfectly-aligned sandbags and rubble-filled containers “I used the beautiful Hindu Kush mountain range for the background, which in real life the staff only see over razor wire and blast walls.”

Nick said the year 1387 was actually 2008 in the Persian calendar.

He has now been asked by an American female GI serving in Baghdad to paint a sign for the bar in her US home.

Nick, who founded his company, Eyebright Murals, in 2000, has received orders for his work from all over Britain and as far afield as Scandanavia.

In Worthing, his signs can also be seen at the Royal Oak, Brighton Road, and the Old House At Home, Broadwater Street West.

He has also done signs for hostelries in Seaford, Lancing and Southwick.

The BBC commissioned him to paint a sign called the World's End for a sci-fi series.

It was then promptly “blown up” by an alien deathray.