TWO musicians are halfway through recording the entire 185 Beatles’ song book on the ukulele.

I’ve tuned into their website and listened to some of the results and, would you believe it, even on the uke, The Beatles songs have turned out nice again.

Yes, it may sound like a daft project that comes from America but some of the recordings are brilliant.

New singers and bands giving a new sound to old favourites, plus a ukulele for good measure.

Who would have thought that after all this time George Formby would become the fifth Beatle.

The idea comes from American Roger Greenawalt and Englishman David Barratt who describe themselves as Performance Philanthropists.

They have held festivals playing all The Beatles songs with ukulele accompaniment in the States.

Greenawalt plays the uke, Barratt contributes other instruments and they are aided and abetted by guest rock and roll bands and singers.

Their first concert, on December 7 2008, in Brooklyn New York, involved 60 singers and a Yoko Ono lookalike and took 12 hours to complete.

Money raised was given to Warren Buffett, the richest man in America, to invest for charity.

As well as a uke fanatic, Greenawalt is a record producer. The decision to record all the songs was, he says, a logical extension from the concerts.

He and Barratt are making the recordings available on the internet every Tuesday – you’ll find them by Googling “Roger and Dave Present The Beatles Complete on Ukulele”.

They started their re-recording mission on January 20 2009 and after making one recording available online every week there are, so far, 71 songs.

The duo are hoping to finish the project on July 31, 2012, the eve of the London Olympics.

Greenawalt says there is nothing strange in using a uke for the songs. John Lennon learned to play on one and George Harrison never travelled without one in his later years.

In fact, Harrison attended meetings of the George Formby Society and The Ukulele Society of Great Britain. He played the uke solo from When I’m Cleaning Windows on the Beatles’ song Free As A Bird. Lennon shouts ‘Turned Out Nice Again’, at the end, a well-known Formby catchphrase.

“I have long been making the case that The Beatles oeuvre is absolutely on par with the 37 plays of Shakespeare or any other body of creative work you want to compare it to,” Greenawalt explained.

“Except that far more people have heard, enjoyed and been influenced by The Beatles in the last 40 years than have read or seen Shakespeare in the last 400.”

Each song also comes with an in-depth assessment of the lyrics, music, time and place of its composition, and social significance, which is absolutely fascinating.

But you can just listen to the music.

Tune in, download and enjoy for free.

They can’t touch you for it, as George Formby might have said.