A YORK band will be seen on thousands of computer screens from this month, as the new face of a major advertising campaign.

The Grand Old Uke Of York were approached by Toyota to film an advert for a new social media campaign promoting the Verso people carrier, and recorded new music for the film.

Naomi Wells Smith, from the band, said seven of the 15 band members managed to fit into the Verso for the video, which shot for two days around York, but the invitation was almost dismissed.

She said: “We just got approached out of the blue, we’ve no idea how they heard of us.

"They just emailed saying they wanted us to take part in an advert. We get so many requests, we take each one with a pinch of salt.

“Our member Tim was driving, and he’s the main focus of the advert.

"He’s done a really good job, we don’t know where this film star quality was hidden, but it’s come out now. He’s already insufferable.”

As well as recording a cover of Steppenwolf’s Born To Be Wild for the advertisement, the band were also asked to write their own original piece which ended up being used for the final cut.

Scott Brownlee from Toyota said: “We found the Grand Old Uke of York via their Facebook channel, and as they are a busy and hardworking group wanted to see if we could help them with their travel to and from gigs. “We filmed the piece on the outskirts of York, with a couple of visits to their studio for good measure.

"We were impressed by their music and their camaraderie and were pleased that they found our Verso MPV ideal for their needs.

"The fact they even composed an original piece of music for us was a real bonus.”

The band are set perform at this weekend’s Radio 2’s Car Fest South, on the same bill as acts they cover in their ukulele shows, including Status Quo and Stereophonics.

Naomi said they may or may not show off their covers to the artists, it's undecided.

She said: “Again, we’ve no idea how that came about.

“There are some really good bands so we’re quite excited.

"We’ve played our covers to artists before, we played Golden Brown before The Stranglers, but I don’t know if they all heard it at Galtres Festival.”