Avowed ukulele lover George Harrison once wrote in a note to a friend “Everyone I know who is into the ukulele is ‘crackers’... you can’t play and not laugh!” I’m crackers for the ukulele. The instrument has lit up my life like the nine o’clock fireworks – it’s sparkly, fun, wholesome and everyone’s welcome.

It all started a few months ago with an invitation to a “ladies salon” house-warming party, asking us to come with an offering. So, I baked a cake, not realising the offering was meant to be a poem or a song or a performance of some kind.

Actor, Play School star and national treasure Justine Clarke was a more organised guest than me, and on brief: she brought along her ukulele, and 10 photocopied hand-outs with the handwritten chords and lyrics of Tonight You Belong To Me (an old American song made famous by Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters in The Jerk).

She played the song, taught us harmonies and how to sing it in rounds.

We sang with Justine leading us, 10 of us singing together, with the happy tone of a ukulele tinkling the melody and keeping us in tune.

It........

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