Since the club started in May 2007, we have grown to be a group of over 30 people, mostly living in Birmingham and the West Midlands, who have discovered the amazing amount of fulfillment and enjoyment that can be gained from learning to play 'figure-of-eight' wooden ukuleles. These are wrongly regarded as 'toys' by some but, rest assured, in the right hands these wonderfully compact musical instruments are capable of everything from pop  to classical music and ragtime to rock.

We meet weekly to have a hugely enjoyable session accompanying ourselves as we sing some old (and some not-so-old) songs together as well as trying out our own arrangements of instrumental compositions.

We try and cater for all musical tastes and the only thing we draw the line at is we don't allow vellum headed banjo-ukuleles at the club. They are quite different and are just too loud when compared to our gentle acoustic sound!

Beginners are welcome to join the club and because of the simple nature of the songsheets we play from, not to mention the ease of strumming a ukulele, a novice will quickly learn to play along with the rest of the group.

We are all still learning, with our various members representing all stages of accomplishment but even so we have performed together in public many times now and to great acclaim. We are often willing to appear at charity events, local festivals, private parties and other functions and have been regular performers at CoCoMAD and Birmingham's ArtsFest.

You may already have seen us in action. Sometimes we appear as The Second City Strummers, sometimes as the Second City Ukulele Massive (or SCUM to our devotees!)

Often we have performed under the name of 'Carlo Mahalo & the G-Strings' but these groups have always been made up of those members of the Second City Ukulele Players Association who wish to play in public. It is great fun to perform but it's not compulsory. The same goes for the Aloha shirts we seem to all delight in wearing!

Some of us are experienced musicians on other instruments, while others of us are at last fulfilling a life-long ambition to make music having only now discovered the astonishing simplicity of the ukulele.

To see some amateur videos that will convey a flavour of how we sound, click:  http://tinyurl.com/bx58hr

We meet every week during term time at 7:30 on Tuesday evenings in the upstairs function room at our current venue:

Come and join us and give the ukulele a try! Beginners are welcome. Ukuleles are usually available to borrow on the night, and we can often arrange to have budget ukuleles to buy - especially if you warn us in advance. We can also advise you concerning more expensive instruments as well as choice of strings, tuners, etc.

Contact the club leader Jon Ingram by email to find out more: SCUPAuk@bigfoot.com

Or find out further details of this and other Ukulele Clubs at UK Uke : http://www.ukuke.co.uk/