Every so often a weird cult band gains a massive popular following, which is exactly what happened to the Ukulele Orchestra Of Great Britain a few years ago.

Their quirky miniature-guitar covers of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit and the Sex Pistols’s Anarchy In The UK, ingeniously renamed Anarchy In The Ukulele, won mainstream radio play and earned them gigs at festivals, including Glastonbury.

On stage at the Worthing Pavilion Theatre, they said they had been performing together for 25 years and their leap into the mainstream limelight came after two decades of folk festivals.

Sadly, the “ukes” charm was a shortlived novelty. Their hour-and-a-half performance, including interval, felt much longer.

Rare insights of musical brilliance, such as Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights, were undermined by the six members of the orchestra thinking they were the stars of a comedy act.

Every song was preceded by hammed-up jokes designed to look like they’d been plucked from the air, but had likely been pulled out for every show on their tour. There were some laughs at the gags, but mainly exasperated chortles.

A few songs did capture the imagination in recreating a classic in that strange high-pitched twanging sound of the shrunken guitars, but they had all been heard several years ago.

The group had a brief glimpse of mainstream success but, on this night, the Ukulele Orchestra offered nothing new.