They describe their partnership as “creative compost” and made their latest album in a lighthouse. Cameron Murray meets entertaining Aussies, Tyrone and Lesley

As the audience settled in, a tall man in a brown suit began setting up a slide projector. While old images of a dog show appeared on a screen, bucktoothed Tyrone Shoelaces picked up a soprano ukulele, adjusted his hat, and gently launched into his first tune.

It was 2006 and I was utterly entranced, along with everyone else in the room.

I later learnt that this neo-vaudevillian was the invention of an Australian artist named David Megarrity.

“It’s quite unusual, and I think a mask changes you,” David says. “It’s not really a character because I think a character has a backstory. I don’t know if Tyrone does. It’s just me in a different mode, and technically you’d call that a stage persona.

“But it’s taken me in some really interesting directions, not only in performance, but also in writing. There’s a whole bunch of songs I reckon I wouldn’t have written if I didn’t have that performance outlet as Tyrone.”

David first came into contact with the uke during a theatre production and quickly succumbed to its charms.

“As many ukulele players will attest, there’s a real difference to pulling out a guitar – everyone sort of strokes their chins or starts looking for the exits,” he says. “But you pull out a ukulele and people are like, ‘Cool, what’s going to happen here? It can’t be too bad.’ Certainly, when there’s a theatrical frame around it, it has this aura.”

In 2000, David penned a comedy show called Ukulele Mekulele, which required a double bassist (and a fake gorilla). Samuel Vincent, who had impressed David at an unrelated studio session, agreed to play bass and the pair formed a duo called Tyrone and Lesley. The hit show made it all the way to the Sydney Opera House and the double act has endured and evolved over the past 25 years.

Tyrone and Lesley recently released their tenth studio album, Keepers.

“We wrote a song about a lighthouse in a lighthouse, and that kind of gave us the idea that maybe we should record it properly,” David explains. “And then we started writing songs about what we make of buildings, and what buildings make of us.

“The uke is a great tool for collaboration; two people creating something they could never have done on their own. The time Samuel and I spent in the lighthouse was a real change of gear for us. Instead of stealing time from all the other stuff we were meant to be doing, we had a week dedicated to writing, yet the moments when we were just hanging out, looking at the sea, swapping instruments, jamming, making sounds rather than music, were as productive as any designated slice of work time.”

While David is incredibly dedicated to his craft, he warns against the dangers of perfectionism.

“Trying to make everything great all the time can really hobble the sense of play that’s the heart of creativity,” he says. “Releasing yourself from the need to be excellent is a good strategy and makes the time more enjoyable. It’s conducive to the creative compost you need to grow something great.”

When David broke his elbow in 2012, it revealed how much the uke means to him.

“It wasn’t until I couldn’t play for about three months that I went, ‘Actually, playing the ukulele helps me feel good. It’s part of my everyday life,’” he says. “As annoying as it might be for one’s housemates or family, you just pick it up and have a little tinkle and then put it back down again. And I really missed that.

“I do love that formulation of Azo Bell’s, the great Australian ukulele player and performer, where he said the ukulele is the least harmful thing you can make out of a piece of wood. That’s a beautiful way of describing not only the craft of making an instrument, but the kinds of things it inspires you to do.”

As for songwriting, David advocates “sitting with your instrument and just playing something round and round, letting it grow, or reducing it to some kind of essence. Grab a uke, play a chord, take off a finger, add one, whatever – let the instrument tell you what it likes to play. You can’t contrive happy accidents, but if you stumble about in unfamiliar territory, you may trip over one.

“For Tyrone and Lesley, we’re interested in creating the unexpected – a sense of surprise for our audiences. How can you create surprising products if you don’t take the time to surprise yourself in the process?”

This article is from Idler #109.

Subscribers may comment. Please add your idle thoughts using the box below

Subscribe to the Idler here and get 17% off the shop price plus a FREE copy of Idle Thoughts by Tom Hodgkinson, worth £8.95.

How to Live Like a Stoic

The May/June 2026 issue of the Idler (#109) is available in Waitrose, Smiths and TG Jones.

Click here for your nearest stockist.