Mo: It started before the Proms. I think after the Ukulele Orchestra of GB had played locally a couple of times. A local uke player asked the landlord if he could host a uke night, advertised it and was as surprised as anyone when 50 people turned up.

I think there's a bit of a Zeitgeist for it, which the Proms followed, rather than led...local music shops started displaying ukes prominently about a year ago, together with "uke songbooks" containing a lot of classic rock and pop standards with uke chord notations. The "diddley" sessions and acoustic jams are mainly attended by "mature" people whereas the uke sessions are predominantly under 40s, with many under 30s.

We've had a couple of the uke players attend the Thursday "diddley" sessions recently...one has graduated to banjo!!!