ukulele idol

Do you recognise this man?

Well for those of you who came along to our fete last summer, you might recall this handsome chap as Mr. Rod Thomas, who was strumming his ukulele at about 2 o'clock on the Sunday on The Acoustic Bandstand stage.

As well as working the sports casual look rather well, he's also just won Best Ukulele Video of the Year award , which features another rather fetching jumper and some very friendly socks.

You can listen to more of Rod's ear candy here or simply just kick back and watch his award winning video (and jumper) below:

win a thing

Small competition...

I bought two copies by mistake, so someone else can have the spare. Best reason posted before 9am on Monday wins it.

one, two, three, four

This feels like something everyone should watch just before the weekend. Especially if you're learning to count.

some video highlights from the weekend

Youtube is a truly wonderful thing for stuff like this.

James Taylor Quartet on Saturday night:

nabbed from darrenwool

The wonderful Angus and Julia Stone playing their Mango Tree song on Sunday afternoon in the Hay Barn:

filmed quite badly by ourselves on a little digital camera that does movie clips

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain play a unique cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit. (Watch the far left strummer for some great ukulele head banging).

same camera, same shakie hip shot style

And last, but definitely not least, our very own innocent band in the Village Disco on Sunday evening:

 

our day by day fete line up

There's going to be plenty of stuff to do at our fete on both the Saturday and Sunday so it might be worth planning what you want to fit in over a tea and biscuit before hand. So here's a day by day, hour by hour guide to what we have lined up over the weekend.

There'll also be loads of other stuff dotted about which isn't mentioned above. Like ferret racing, smoothie tasting, knitting and tea drinking, come and say hello to innocent area, face painting, petting zoo, funfair rides, kids assault course, a flea circus, a big farmers' market , real ale, cider and other bars, and much more.

christian prommer's drumlesson & son of dave

Thought we'd show you some more of the people who will be playing at the fete. First, Christian Prommer's Drumlesson, who plough the furrow where jazz meets classic house.

They do a mean drum solo too.

And here's Son of Dave doing his one man thing.

angus and julia stone

They're playing at our village fete in ten days time and they even wrote a song about a mango tree. Very considerate. Nice video too.

the bananaphone

If I had to choose one question I've been asked the most since working at innocent, it would have to be "Is there really a bananaphone?" The simple answer is yes. And although it's technically not the phone we speak into, it's what rings out to the whole of Fruit Towers. And it is shaped like a banana. In fact, this is what it looks like.

If novelty phones are your thing, you can see more here

Lots of people do ring us for a chat, and you get to speak to a real, live person too (as long as it's during office hours, we haven't quite reached a 24 hour hotline just yet).  If you would like to get in touch, the number is on the bottle.

There's even a song all about it, by a nice man called Raffi. If you like your songs fairly repetitive, you'll love this one. You can listen and indeed watch a slightly strange video with a man who isn't Raffi above.

The sad news is, however, when we were having a bit of a move around in the office, the bananaphone was put somewhere "safe." You know, like the safe place you put your Bucks Fizz limited edition record to, and then can never remember where that safe place was. It's safe, but so safe you can't find it. We'll keep hunting and fingers crossed, we'll find it again.

please say hello to the innocent band

Here's a very sneak preview of the innocent band who played for us here at Fruit Towers last Thursday lunch time. They'll be playing again at our village fete on both the Saturday and Sunday so keep your eye out for them on the programme.

Every single member works here Monday to Friday, 9am-6pm, so we're quite proud that they've managed to pull together a fully fledged 9 piece band in such a short space of time. In the blurry distance, you can probably just about make out Caroline, Cass, Ceri and Vic on vocals, Duncan on drums, Jamie M and Tim S on trombone and trumpet respectively, Ruvan on guitar, Malinna on bass and Ben T working his magic on the piano. Oh and there's a tambourine that gets passed around as well. We can't forget the tambourine.

And here's a chicken with his eye on some apples.

Unfortunately, he's already been booked for another engagement this summer.

some video

Mustashrik worked here in our design team last year. He's an illustrator of many talents - check out this video that he's just done for Nizlopi.