THE Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain started as a bit of fun – even the grand moniker. “We called ourselves that name as a joke; it was like calling ourselves the Royal Shakespeare Company or whatever,” says Richie Williams, whose baritone ukulele-playing skills were brought on board by orchestra founders Kitty Lux and George Hinchliffe from the very start 26 years ago.

More popular than ever and now playing 150 shows a year, the Ukulele Orchestra will return to the Grand Opera House in York on Tuesday and Wednesday, when Richie will take his place in the eight-piece line-up as ever.

He was not always a ukulele player. Far from it, in fact. “I was a guitarist with a half-decent past and I was playing in a soul band with George, who has been playing ukulele since he was… well, he can play anything.

“We were backing Motown artists like Mary Wells, and he was playing Hammond organ in the band, but if you play Hammond, by the end of the night you have no friends because you have to carry it out.”

Goodbye heavy organ, hello to travelling much lighter with the ukulele, although the transition was more serendipitous than planned.

“George was staying at my house when I was living in London at the time, and he started playing my Blue Smurf guitar, the one with two strings,” says Richie. “And because he got a tune out of it, he saw a way forward, so he progressed to the four-string ukulele.”

It was at this point that George gave his singer-songwriter friend Kitty a ukulele too. “He thought, ‘What if I buy ukuleles for all my friends?’,” recalls Richie, whose first “bonsai guitar” was a Clover ukulele. “It cost me £17 with wholesale discount.”

Did he fall in love with it straightaway? “No, to be honest, but what I did fall in love with was that it was a great leveller, an unexplained world,” says Richie.

“And above anything else we can contribute, the sound does have an inherent cheeriness to it, so George Formby was on to something – although he actually played the banjo ukulele. George’s ukulele was a bit harsh sounding, but we all have a nice tonal quality because our ukuleles are deeper.”

For Richie, the switch from guitar to ukulele was not one giant leap for mankind.

“Mine has the top four strings of a guitar, so it wasn’t difficult to know where the notes are, but the whole approach to playing is different,” he says. “You have to change strumming patterns so that they all blend together, but you’re also all playing something interesting at the same time to not tread on each other’s toes.”

As can be heard on the new live album Still Life, the Ukulele Orchestra represents a collision of post-punk performance, rock’n’roll obituary and melodious oldies. Take their interpretation of Nirvana’s now 20-year-old grunge classic, Smells Like Teen Spirit, for example.

“The funny thing about that song is that Kurt Cobain said all Nirvana’s are loud and then they’re quiet, and a ukulele exaggerates that. When we do it, it’s deafening at one point and pathetically quiet, the next,” says Richie.

Sitting in chamber group format dressed in formal evening wear, the Ukulele Orchestra uses the limitations of the instrument to create a musical freedom that reveals unsuspected musical insights, be it Nirvana or Tchaikovsky, Otis Redding or Spaghetti Western soundtracks.

“God knows why The Good, The Bad And The Ugly works, but it does, maybe because the sound is unexpected,” says Richie.

The latest addition is Kraftwerk’s metronomic 1981 number one, The Model, as suggested by Richie.

“We were talking about what new covers to do and we were thinking, ‘ooh, Eighties’ synth’. George said he’d rather do Autobahn or Pocket Calculator but I went away and wrote down the notes and chords to The Model and the next time I went to rehearsal, we tried it out and everyone said, ‘Oh, that’s great’!”

One-nil to Richie Williams.

Beatles songs do not feature in the orchestra’s repertoire and nor as yet do Led Zeppelin. “But I’d love to do Whole Lotta Love!” says Richie. Good luck with putting that idea to George.

• The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, Grand Opera House, York, Tuesday and Wednesday, 7.30pm. Tickets update: still available for both nights on 0844 871 3024 or online at atgtickets.com/york