Interview with London Vegetable Orchestra

A Christmas video of the LVO playing Jingle Bells in December 2024 reached one million views in a single day and over 12 million within months. Somewhere between classical music, internet absurdity and British humour, London Vegetable Orchestra found an audience far beyond the concert hall.

Today, we spoke with them.

So let's go back to the beginning — how did it all start?

Tim has been making real recorders for about 40 years. When a friend said, “Can you make a recorder out of a carrot?”, he had a go and made one that played three notes. Did a little performance in the countryside, it got filmed, the video went out. Next thing people were ringing him up asking if he could make instruments out of all sorts of vegetables. Two of us he actually met at a film studio in London — we were from the Royal Academy of Music. And it just sort of took off after that. It's been just a laugh.

So it started as a joke?

Tim didn't take it seriously at first. None of us did. But now we have to, because so many other people are. And that's very English — to the English, life is never particularly serious. If you take yourself too seriously and things go wrong, you get very embarrassed. So we always start by not taking ourselves seriously until the rest of the world does. And then we think — ah, perhaps we are not a joke after all.

What makes you unique — is it the vegetables or the craft?

The thing we have that nobody else does is Tim and his carrot recorders. Tim is the only person in the world who can make them, and they carry most of the tunes. They actually sound like proper instruments. You can't just do that overnight. 

But it's also not just playing or making the instruments — it's general musicianship. Clare and Tim instinctively take the tune, someone works out the bass line, Simon fills in the missing harmonies. All without rehearsal! Having a really good knowledge of hundreds of pieces so that if somebody requests something, you just play it without ever having practised it together. It's easy to forget that's actually quite a skill. Clare is a professional cellist, she plays with top orchestras in London. The brass players are very high-powered young musicians. All of us have done hundreds and hundreds of hours of practice. That investment in time is essential — even on completely strange instruments.

When did you realise it was going viral?

Christmas 2024. Clare uploaded our Jingle Bells video on Christmas Day to our 400 followers on Instagram. On the 27th it had half a million views. By the end of the day — a million. Then a million a day for eight days. Then another four million over the next six months. We were getting messages from all over the world and couldn't keep up. Every time we refreshed there were another five or ten thousand views and comments. It was slightly surreal and slightly crazy. That's when we realised — okay, we better take this a bit more seriously.

Any criticism when it went viral?

Overwhelmingly people just loved it. There were a handful of comments about sustainability and wasting food, which we're very aware of and try to minimise as much as possible. But the response was just so positive — we got messages saying this brightened my day, I needed this today. 

And then BBC Radio 3 happened.

Radio 3 did not expect quite what we were going to do. And we didn't expect it was going to be videoed. So for everyone — the BBC, Radio 3, and us — the whole thing was a bit of a surprise. We got invited back for Christmas 2025. And actually just this week one of the senior people at Radio 3 said that we must get you back. It's becoming an annual tradition.

The Brussels sprout moment at Christmas 2025 — tell me everything.

Five minutes before we went on air, Simon decided instead of playing his normal sweet potato he was going to try the Brussels sprout tree. He quickly drilled a hole through, worked out a way to make it work, and then performed Descant from A Christmas Carol Hark! The Herald Angels Sing with some really, really high notes, every single one in tune. Genuinely one of the most extraordinary performances Clare says she's ever seen. She didn't do it, but she's proudest to have been involved.

Walk me through the instruments — where do you get them, how do you make them?

Supermarkets mostly. Tim always has a corner of his fridge full of carrots. They have to be big and straight enough to drill through in a clean line — too small and you lose the range of notes entirely. Sometimes you just can't find the right ones because it depends on someone out in a field with a tractor. If he's only pulling small carrots that day, that's all you get.

Clare needs the squashes big enough for bass notes — the longer the tube through the squash, the easier it is to play low. Some of us grow our own — courgettes and butternut squashes work well, carrots are much harder. The instruments take about 10 to 25 minutes to make. At our shows we run making stalls — we hand guests a pepper, scoop it out, insert a carrot mouthpiece, teach them a few notes, play a song together. They go away very happy. Last summer Morrisons sponsored us — sending vegetables to every performance for three months, delivered by a blacked-out chauffeur-driven car. A chauffeur would step out and say — I've got some vegetables. These vegetables travel better than we do!

How do you maintain the instruments during a performance?

Tim soaks the carrot recorders in water overnight so the carrot cells are still alive. During the performance we keep water nearby and put them in between songs. Out of six recorders Tim makes, by the end of the show maybe only one is still working. But by then we've finished so it doesn't matter.

After the show Tim gives them away to small children in the audience or to the rest of us. Or we eat them. Any spare vegetables get divided up between whoever was on the gig. Both, really.

Why not fruits?

You can't get a clean tube of air through them because they're too watery. The sides of the tube need to be as close to wood or metal as possible. Clare tried a parsnip once — too fibrous. Tried an aubergine thinking it would be great. The sound was just terrible. Not terrible-funny. 

Although we have used aubergines as percussion — Simon can slice them and flap them like a castanet. So they're not completely useless.

What's coming up?

This weekend — Eastnor Castle for Blue Tit’s 40th birthday party and an after-dinner performance for the Music Teachers’ Association annual conference. Then the Great British Farm Fest. Then Sandringham, the Royal Horticultural Society garden show, three days in July. Library events for children. We had an inquiry from San Diego — hasn't happened yet for various boring reasons. But we're getting inquiries all the time, including international ones. 

And the big dream?

Last Night of the Proms. Something with a full symphony orchestra on a big stage — that would be wonderful. Or BTS, Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran. Ed Sheeran actually said on radio that he'd try anything once and would collaborate with us. We have a recording of him saying it. 

In conversation: Tim Cranmore, Clare Graham, Simon Tong and Patrick Johns

Upcoming events: https://londonvegetableorchestra.com/