Taken by the simple ditty, James fetched his own ukelele and John taught him the song so they could duet over the laggy connection, then James had to run out to go to a gig but not before John aggressively promoted Ukepedia at him.

Today, this arrived in our inbox and James was crowned as the latest star in the Ukeverse. It’s not a short article; it’s not abridged; it’s 8 minutes 16 seconds long. James is AWESOME.

(Yes, it’s on a guitar but we don’t mind.)

• The Fozzie Bear article on Wikipedia

I’m sure it will come as no surprise that Wikipedia has an article on the Ukelele. What may come as a surprise however is that Rob is twice the size of normal humans and is playing a regular guitar in the video.

Rob appears courtesy of West Yorkshire’s one-time second-best three-piece acoustic folk-country-scifi-gospel fusion band The Gillroyd Parade.

Lyrics

The ukulele
from Hawaiian
ʻukulele’
variantly spelled
ukelele
(particularly in the UK),
or alternatively abbreviated uke,
is a chordophone classified as a plucked lute,
it is a subset of the guitar family of instruments, generally with four strings or four courses of strings.

Tone and volume of the instrument vary with size and construction.
Ukuleles
come in four sizes, Soprano, Concert, Tenor, and Baritone.

Ukulele
varieties include hybrid instruments such as the banjo
ukulele
harp
ukulele
and lap steel
ukulele.

There is an electrically amplified version, the electric
ukulele
The resonator
ukulele is louder and of different tone quality than traditional wooden
ukuleles
producing sound by one or more spun aluminium cones (resonators) instead of the wooden soundboard. Another unique variant is the Tahitian
ukulele
which is usually carved from a single piece of wood and does not have a hollow soundbox.

See also
List of ukulele manufacturers
List of ukulele musicians
This to be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
ukulele

Lyrics are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Big, big thanks to Blindingham for his submissions. If we ever work out where the Chiltern Gateway Centre is, I will send him a Bedfordshire Clanger for his efforts ;)

Lyrics

Cortinarius ponderosus
also known as the Ponderous Cortinarius
is a basidiomycete mushroom of the genus Cortinarius.

It is very large
and due to its thick stem
it can be mistaken for Boletus edulis.

This mushroom is one of the largest mushrooms in the genus Cortinarius,
with a convex cap
that ranges from 8 to 38 cm across
and becomes plane in age.

It often has an olive metallic tinge,
and the surface is viscid,
often with small rusty brown scales.

The margin is ocher
and remains inrolled until the mushroom is fully mature.
The flesh of the mushroom is white, thick and firm.
The gills are rusty brown, adnate and slightly decurrent.
The stalk is thick and bulbous at the base.

It has a slimy yellow universal veil,
and the cortina leaves a rusty brown hairy area on the upper stalk.

(That’ll do.)

(Bulbous at the base
Bleugh sod, I’m so close
F!
That was the chord I was after at that point.
Or D Minor.
[That was the effing chord]
D Minor, that’s what I meant.)

Lyrics are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

The wonderful Blindingham again, this time singing the article on Unterseeboot 5.

Lyrics

(Unterseeboot 5
I don’t know how to say ‘five’ in German)

Unterseeboot 5 or U-5 has been the name
of several German submarines or U-boats
during the First World War,
the Second World War and
in the post-war Bundesmarine
(now Deutsche Marine)

Unterseeboot 5 (1910)
was a German submarine built in 1910 for service in the Kaiserliche Marine.
She spent the First World War as a training boat
and was sunk in 1914 in an accident.

During the First World War, Germany also possessed the submarines:
Unterseeboot B-5, built in 1915 and stricken in 1919.
Unterseeboot C-5, built in 1915 and scuttled in 1916.
The Austro-Hungarian Navy also possessed a Unterseeboot V.

Unterseeboot 5 (1935)
was a Kriegsmarine submarine built in 1935
and sunk in 1943 during the Second World War.

Unterseeboot 5 (S184)
was a Type 205 submarine of the Bundesmarine,
built in 1963, and scrapped in Nineteen Seventy Fooooouurr.

Lyrics are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

First up, the Bedfordshire Clanger “which is, disappointingly, a kind of pasty, and not a small knitted moon dweller. Ah well.”.

Meat and jam in one handy pasty parcel?! Très merveilleux!

Lyrics

The Bedfordshire Clanger
is a traditional dish from the county of the same name.
It is an elongated suet crust dumpling
still available at some bakers
and served at some hotels
and local places of interest,
such as the Chiltern Gateway Centre on Dunstable Downs.

It has meat filling at one end and a jam filling at the other,
comprising main course and dessert in one item.

Traditionally, it was made by women
for their menfolk to take to their agricultural work as a midday meal.

See also pasty

(What is the Chiltern Gateway Centre
It doesn’t even have a link
But it assures me I can find one there. Um.)

Lyrics are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Dave Smalley videoed the shenanigans, including John’s intro about the confusing licensing situation.

We’ll be putting up a video of “Otitis Media” very soon. You can read more about Ukepedia here on the about page. Get sending your recordings in!

Please get excited.