Ben Rouse with Aldrine Guerrero and James Agg at UFGB

LSH is having the lads in tonight. This is becoming an annual tradition - himself and a few pals to chew the fat and make some noise away from the women. Last year he thought I'd be going out - I wasn't - so I shut myself away upstairs with my uke and amused herself quite satisfactorily, thank you, while gales of male laughter came up the stairs. Well, it would be no hardship to do it again tonight, but it turns out that the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain are playing tonight in the next town. That'll do for me! I phoned a pal and we'll be there. The fellas can make as much noise as they like.

These days when I know the UOGB are going to be around, the first thing I think of is, "Will Ben be among them?" Ben Rouse. A really nice and highly talented young man I met for the first time at GNUF (Grand Northern Ukulele Festival) last year, although I had seen him perform before. Ben plays fantastic ukulele and I was pretty wowed at GNUF to see him doing a great job accompanying Mike Hind on double bass. So I was very pleased to see a few months ago that he now plays with the wonderful and very famous Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain!

I saw Ben most recently in Cheltenham at the Ukulele Festival of Great Britain. One of the headline acts was Aldrine Guerrero - my, what a player! (see also... Ukulele Underground) To keep this brief, what a wonderful surprise - on the Sunday afternoon open mic stage, who should appear but Aldrine, flanked as always by Aaron Nakamura but also by Ben and James Agg! Myrna and I hadn't been able to get a seat in the pub beer garden, so we were sitting on our coats on the grass right in front of the stage... how lucky... I was able to get some good video. Here it is, for your delectation!



Well, wasn't that something special!

See it on Youtube here...

There will be more on Ben and the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain before too long.

Meanwhile, thanks for dropping in! Busy busy, off I go again...