Hampton Pools’ Summer Picnic Concerts get underway next week and the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain are set to be one of the star attractions. The eight strong-group spoke to Will Gore about touring the world, cover versions and their ukulele heroes.

Will Gore: What is planned for the Hampton Pools gig?

Jonty Bankes: There will be music and laughter.

Richie Williams: Nothing is usually planned until the night of the performance, whereupon we select the usual toe-tapping, life-affirming numbers from our repertoire. However, I can promise no running, no dive-bombing and no heavy petting!

Kitty Lux: A good time to be had by all!

Will Grove-White: A strum-fest and a quick dip.

WG: What do you love about playing the ukulele?

Dave Suich: You can go on a world tour with hand luggage.

Hester Goodman: I can play with the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.

Peter Brooke-Turner: I love the way when I’m feeling sad and blue just strumming a few chords will put a spring in my step!

WG: What inspired you to learn the ukulele?

George Hinchliffe: Wanting to play clarinet like Albert Nicholas but only having a ukulele banjo. DS: I was given one as an heirloom from great aunty Dolly.

HG: No one else apart from my dad played one when I started, and it was a truly ‘outsider’ instrument.  W G-W: Piano lessons.

WG: How hard is it to learn? It’s easy to get simple chords out which sound OK pretty quickly but, like any instrument, it takes practice to become a virtuoso.

P B-T: It’s very easy! You can learn three chords in half an hour and then be playing a song within the hour!

WG: How do you pick the songs for the orchestra to play?

HG: Variously – we each bring the songs that we sing to the table, sometimes we decide on one together, sometimes we stumble upon one by accident, sometimes George presents us with a complicated arrangement. Every now and again we are asked to do something specific, and if it works out well we keep it in the set.

WG: What is your favourite song the orchestra has played?

JB: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, I think it has everthing we do in one song.

RW: MacArthur Park HG: Too many to choose from to have a favourite, I’m afraid, but I’ve enjoyed doing Teenage Dirtbag and Bernsteins’ America.

WG: What has been the highlight of your time with the orchestra?

DS: Playing Ronnie Scotts, Whitstable Oyster Festival and New Biggin Village Hall.  P B-T: Playing alongside Cliff Richard and Dame Vera Lynn and the VE Day celebrations in Hyde Park in 1995.

W G-W: Playing to a pack of dancing camels that had been flown from Germany to the UK.

WG: Song you would most like to cover?

RW: Everything Happens to Me by Chet Baker.

HG: Not really a song, but Rhapsody in Blue.

WG: Who is your ukulele hero?

DS: Wilko Johnson from Dr Feelgood (though I don’t think he played ukulele!) RW: Roy Smeck and more recently George Benson. I discovered that George Benson originally learnt to play on the ukulele at the age of seven.

KL: Ukulele Ike – he is the Charlie Parker of the uke and his scat singing is to die for.

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, Hampton Pools, High Street, July 18, 7.15pm, £24, hamptonpool.co.uk