A plucky performance

I am pleased to say that I had one of those sublime times at the Theatre Royal in Wakefield. I received tickets as a birthday gift to see the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. The performance was thoroughly satisfying. Great humour, great performances and a wonderfully shared atmosphere will live with me for a long time.

I have been a fan of their sound for a year or two. I saw them on TV sing and play their take on Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. The image of a group of evening dressed English people singing this grunge rock classic quite delighted me. I have always been won over by music that makes me laugh or smile and here I was again.

They carry an air of English calm. It all seems to be just something to do. They walk on stage and talk as if they are interrupting our night out. But they are fun. Their act can be summed up for me in their introduction to and thier explanation of the range of sizes of the various ukuleles. They simply say which will burn longer if placed upon a fire, but this deprecation is a humorous front to superb musicianship with the humble ukulele.

John Chesson is accredited with saying that a lover of music is someone who can listen to the "William Tell Overture" without thinking of the Lone Ranger. If the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain were to play the William Tell Overture, they would erase, by their individual sound and humour any memory of the Lone Ranger and possibly that of Rossini and William Tell because one of their supreme skills is to disguise a tune or subvert its genre so that you feel I am listening to something new, or at least taken delightfully by surprise.

Looking back over this, I can recall Spike Jones and his City Slickers, Victor Borge, Bonzo Dog Doo Dah band, Alex Harvey, Flanders and Swann, Neil Innes (as an individual performer), Randy Newman, John Otway who all have at times done something with music that makes me smile or laugh out loud. The list is not complete. There will be others that I have come across and temporarily forgotten. Tom Lehrer. See, there are many. I just like it. Victoria Wood. These performers take humour in all its broad sense and apply it to music. Sometimes just as music. From the slapstick of Spike Jones to the ironies of Randy Newman. From the parodies of Tom Lehrer to the clever social observations of Flanders and Swann. I just think it’s great.

I don’t want to analyse why I find it funny. The author E B White once said that "Humour can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind." And that’s what I feel.

I simply celebrate the joy it has provided. I have dipped widely into this pool of fun and not all of it makes be fall over with laughter. I’m pleased its there.

I recall laughing at Benny Hill’s songs in the 1950s, long before he became more salacious and Yakkety Sax ended his shows. The line “while naughty Samuel Pepys” made chuckle at this delightfully simple pun. Well I was only nine. More recently, the dark and subversive lyrics of Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen have swayed me, sometimes with their outrageous lyrics.

I know all about icebergs. And clearly this is yet another iceberg that hides a whole lot more talent to laugh at. There will be performers who will fail in their endeavour to make me laugh or smile, humour being such a subjective area of experience. Oscar Wilde, of course, said many things. He most certainly had things to say about music.

“Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory,” said Mr Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde. I think he should have added laughter too.