UKULELES are everywhere these days. Have you noticed?

I bought one around 10 years ago from a guy on the south coast who imported them from Indonesia, I believe. It cost around £70, and was a fairly decent one.

Why did I buy one? At the time they weren’t fashionable.

Mention ukulele and people would smile and make a joke about George Formby. For so many years the instrument has been associated with the Wigan-born film comedian who had deep family roots in Warrington and is, indeed, buried in the town’s cemetery.

I’ve been playing guitar for more than 30 years. Not very well, I’m a strummer and a heavy-handed finger-picker.

But I had always had a soft spot for Formby and his ukelele-playing. To my mind, there’s something irresistible about its insistent rinky-dink percussive sound.

To the uninitiated, the ukelele might look like an insignificant toy instrument. Yet, in a programme about Formby’s playing, comedian and fan Frank Skinner demonstrated how brilliant Formby’s playing was. While he might have verged on being illiterate, when it came to performing on the ukelele (or banjolele – a uke/banjo hybrid), the Lancashire lad was a virtuoso.

The programme slowed down some of Formby’s recordings to make clear how proficient and controlled his playing was.

When I got mine, I wanted to be able to do the same as Formby. I wanted my fingers to dance and leap about the tiny fretboard like a… like a… like a what?

A flea? Yes, a flea. Well, did you know ukulele is a Hawaiian word for ‘leaping flea’?

That seems very appropriate.

When I look at how cheaply you can pick up ukes these days, I realise I probably paid a lot more for mine due to how difficult it was to lay your hands on them at the time.

But thanks to a new generation of young, hip musicians, ukes are incredibly fashionable. My kids love bands like Twenty One Pilots, and the ukelele is central to their sound.

Yet, what I find interesting is that the way young musicians play the instrument is completely different to George Formby’s music-hall style of playing that has been associated with the instrument for decades.

Musicians today strum and stroke and jab and chop the strings and tap the body rather like the way a guitarist attacks that instrument.

Formby’s style was all about syncopation and thumb-rolling and finger-fanning. Completely different.

Following on in my series of columns about local history, next week I will shine the spotlight on George Formby and his family roots.

I’ll take a look at his life and career and in particular how our town featured in it. See you then.