My first impression of Tyrone, as he stood backstage at the 2012 Melbourne Ukulele Festival, was of a “geeky” fellow with a substantial overbite in a suit, wearing tortoiseshell glasses and holding a ukulele. It was the red fez on his head which gave me pause: a staid mid-century insurance clerk with a head full of songs who was breaking out of his day-to-day life with a ukulele act?
I loved Tyrone’s act from the moment he stepped onstage with Lesley: his bass playing side-kick. The songs: covering everything from umami to a day in the life of a dung beetle, are completely absorbing and end long before they get boring. The act is so good that it’s easy to forget the skill with which the music is performed. Tyrone’s persona, his singing and ukulele playing carry you away to a time and a place that I imagine Tyrone might say is, ‘long away and far ago.’
Later that day in 2012 when I met David Megarrity: the performer behind Tyrone’s mask, I discovered someone who is serious about his entertainment and whose day job is that of a university drama academic. The showmanship, songwriting and musical execution of Tyrone & Lesley add up to a very special act indeed. On the release of his new album Keepers / Finders in February 2026 I was delighted to have this chance to chat.
Here is David Megarrity, in his own words.
“Tyrone & Lesley started in 2000 when I was doing a theatre show for children with a ukulele, a bass player and a gorilla – it was an analogy for bullying. It presented as a show about the wonders of the ukulele but during the show the ukulele player was such a bastard to his team that they turned on him. We had repurposed George Formby, Tiny Tim, Al Bowlly and various other things, into this narrative and children really loved the show. It concluded with a William Tell overture duel played on ukulele and double-bass. Lesley’s role in the show was to be the put-upon sideman. It was only after that we realised we could write songs together.
Initially I don’t think Sam (Samuel Vincent who plays Lesley in the double act) thought I was serious about us writing songs. The first song we wrote was a very silly song called Bottoms (on the album Ukulele Heart). I said, “Here’s some lyrics,” and he sat down at the piano and immediately played something amazing.
The 1920’s/30’s vibe of what we do, means some of our original songs, especially the tin-pan-alley style ones with classic chord progressions, sound like they’ve been around for a long time. There’s something familiar about them that twigs the ear and Bottoms is one of those. It’s a very popular song with children. Listen to Bottoms
Tyrone is a ‘persona’ (rather than a character with a back-story and a place in a narrative). A persona is like a mask: it’s something you can pop on and become. Everyone knows it’s still you and yet it’s someone different. The prosthetic teeth change my face to perform as a kind of mask. Even vocally because it changes the way I speak as well.
I got the teeth when I was living with someone who’s brother was a dental prosthetist and he made me a test set. I whacked them in and the public seemed to enjoy them. I didn’t think about it too much and gradually this persona of Tyrone sort of emerged.
It’s been interesting for me as a songwriter, to think to myself, ‘I might be feeling a bit sad right now as a person, but Tyrone wouldn’t sing that kind of song. What kind of song might Tyrone sing?’
He might sing about the phases of the moon or about a singing duo that breaks up in the middle of the song. Through the diversions of the persona, I find myself exploring stuff that matters a lot to me but is shaped much more strongly by Tyrone.
Musically, being Tyrone has taken us to places that I wouldn’t have gone without the mask. People don’t realise when they are first picking up a uke, and are still dealing with having confidence onstage, is that if you don’t have a persona onstage, people will make one up for you anyway. They will go, “Oh there’s that unconfident guy on the ukulele”.
To wear a fez at the Woodford Folk Festival when it’s muddy and 33 degrees is certainly not the most inviting prospect, but I do know that the persona makes the show. Suddenly there’s this person who is essentially a white-face clown. Tyrone is someone who wants to be taken seriously and in some ways there’s nothing funnier than that – particularly if they’re holding a uke. That’s the starting point for an audience who then wonders, “What’s going to happen next?”.
Samuel’s persona is more like a servant alongside the pedant of Tyrone but the irony is that he’s a way, way better musician than I’ll ever be. And that’s a really nice silent currency that goes on between us. As a bass player he’s a linchpin in whatever’s going on and probably the only reason that, if I’m any good at all, is that I practice the heck out of what I do just to keep up to his level. It’s really just about the songs. Sometimes Tyrone & Lesley songs have been interpreted by others but there’s something that the two of us do that no-one else seems to quite match.
We work hard to make it look easy and Samuel makes it look really easy. He writes, he sings, he plays, he dances, he responds to me non-verbally onstage. He is able to start a song, when I just look at him sideways. But it’s his own decision to be non-verbal onstage. He’s a very witty man usually.
The duo Bosko & Honey once said we write Children’s songs for adults. That’s a real compliment because, coming from a background in children’s theatre, I know that writing for children is harder than writing for adults because they are a much tougher audience. Children don’t have the same understanding of the conventions of music and theatre, so you’ve almost got to ‘gift’ the conventions as part of the song.
There’s a little boy who lives down the road here and we were talking about a miniature schnauzer. He doesn’t know I’m a performer or anything, but I said, “I wrote a song and did a film clip with a dog of that breed,”. His mum said, “Oh, we’ll look you up.” And now he’s a huge Tyrone fan… but only of that song because it’s about dogs. It’s a song called True Collars.
We created a show called Bear with Me and children brought their teddy bears along to the show. It was effectively a concert for the bears but was really an examination of what attachment means: because the bear will be the first thing a child will own. It was summed up in this nice moment in the show where a parent is holding a child in their lap and a child has a bear in its lap. That sums up the relationship behind attachment, but also about separation. The song Being Small is in the show. We knew that was a special song when we wrote it and we’ve been told it sounds like a Randy Newman song. There’s a kid in all of us, and we’ve got to be kind to that kid. Maybe the playful kid in me who still wants to be taken seriously is at the heart of Tyrone somewhere. Listen to Being Small
One of the things that drives me as a songwriter is that I never thought of myself as a very good singer. To make up for that I decided from an early point that my lyrics had to be really good. Sometimes what you perceive as your deficiencies may actually be your strengths because of the workarounds you do.
Along the way we’ve recorded an album called Gentleman Songsters which was strongly influenced by that 1930s tin-pan-alley vibe. One of my proudest songs on there is called Unaccompanied. Sometimes you write a song and you think, ‘I can’t believe I did that.’ It’s been sung by other people as well. It’s a special song because it kind of performs itself.
For this most recent record we did a residency in a lighthouse where we wrote a lot of songs in a week. It gave us the idea we could write songs about buildings and go to those buildings to record them. The interesting question is, why bother doing all that stuff when we could fake it with a digital tool? Probably because the adventure meant something to us as a pair of songwriter/performers. Watch: This House Knows
So, we did a studio album called Keepers and then an EP called Finders which has those field recordings in it where we went to a lighthouse, an old house or a bridge or whatever. (Released on February 1, 2026)
For our album launch there’ll be projections running behind us and we’ll have a grand piano. There are all sorts of things I do to create a show rather than just a ‘gig’. Even if we’re doing a ukulele festival where it’s a series of acts I work my hardest to make sure the set list has a flow to it and that what I’m saying in-between is set but not ‘fixed’. It really matters to me. That’s where I think the music and the theatre comes together.
As well as the album launch there’s the release of the song Forgot You Knew recorded with The Nukes written about ukulele groups.
Keepers: Spotify Bandcamp Blog
Finders: Spotify Bandcamp Blog
I think that’s the guts of where we’re at right now. And we’re already starting to write the next record. “
Chatting with David Megarrity was highly enjoyable for me. I hope you find some time to watch or listen to his work. His entertainment is a lovely analogue diversion to the harsh and fast-moving digital world. If you’re wondering what he really looks like, without the glasses, fez and teeth, there’s a photo of David below.
Keep Strumming and Smiling,
Ralph
