George hinchliffe wikipedia

In what must be the busiest late-night BBC Prom in years, the eight players/singers/presenters of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain found themselves before a sea of eager faces in the Arean and a packed auditorium. I guess it is the biggest indoor show they have ever played.

What we got was a mixture of their irrepressible popular song pastiches with a clutch of classical favourites. It was these latter that showed the ukulele’s weakness – the impossibility of holding a note, necessitating a constant strumming. ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ – mercifully connected to Hawkwind’s “Silver Machine” – came off worst, the amplified plinking unable to satisfactorily replicate a romantic orchestra. Saint-Saëns’s rattling Danse macabre fared much better: amplified ukuleles do sound extraordinarily skeletal!

However the other two special Proms inserts worked better still. Kitty Lux sang “Jerusalem” poignantly, backed by this most unusu Hester goodman biography of williams family!