In one scene of Martin Scorsese’s 2011 George Harrison biopic, Living In the Material World, the late Beatles songwriter and guitarist opens the boot of his car to reveal lots of ukuleles.

In another scene Harrison plunks away at one of them singing the 1932 song Between Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, for all the world like a modern-day George Formby. He recorded it for his last album, Brainwashed.

“Tom Petty said George Harrison always used to carry two ukuleles around so he could persuade the rock guitarists like Jeff Lynne to play them. Whereas now it seems everybody and his grandmother is using them,” said George Hinchliffe, the Sheffield-born co-founder of The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.

In the last 15 years of his life, George Harrison was something of a fan of the versatile eight-piece who bring their current world tour to Bradford tonight.

“He came to see the group at one stage and had a bit of a sit in with us. It was quite a long time ago. He gave me his phone number. The idea was we would get together and jam, but when you are very famous you have people flocking around you. I didn’t want to fall into that trap.”

For the same reason George turned down the idea of having celebrities come on stage and do a turn with the orchestra, as though they were a novelty band.

“One of things people like about the ukulele is it is anti-celebrity. The whole idea of the ukulele is that it’s a reaction to all the hoopla of hi-tech instruments,” he added.

The orchestra had its genesis in Leeds. Kitty Lux, the orchestra’s other co-founder, was studying at Leeds University. George Hinchliffe was studying art at the Polytechnic. He thinks he bought her a ukulele. Then in 1985, in London, they got together with friends and since then it’s been “one plucking thing after another”.

“We all sing and play. We have quite a range of performance skills. Sometimes I say it’s like a five-a-side football team where the least agile one is in goal. We are like a band of those goalies,” George said.

But those goalies have played all over the world and have worked with Madness, The Kaiser Chiefs, The Ministry of Sound, The British Film Institute and Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens).

But before any of that happened George earned a living for about three years playing Hammond organ in the Snake Davis and Alligator Shoes blues band, and electric violin in the Bradford punjabi band Anjaana.

“We did a lot of weddings. Cricklewood, Derby, Leicester – wherever there was an Asian community. Sometimes we were on stage for five hours at a time.

“I also played electric mandolin, except that it had four strings instead of eight, and the tumbi, a traditional Punjabi one-string lute with a little semi-tone sound. That was quite good experience and I was working all the time.”

It’s been the same story for the past 28 years. The orchestra used to perform about 300 concerts a year, now George said it is more like 200 – a good many of them abroad.

The line-up of this unusual band of pluckers has remained the same since 1995. They are, in his words, a bunch of people who tolerate each other’s foibles.

  • Their concert at St George’s Hall tonight starts at 7.30pm. For tickets ring (01274) 432000.