Catch The Young'Uns, one of folk's hottest tickets, at Wickham Festival

The three-piece, who perform largely a capella, formed 11 years ago. But with back-to-back Best Band gongs at the Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2015 and this year and three albums under their belts, they’ve become one of the folk world’s hottest tickets. And next week they’re playing at Wickham Festival.

With a mix of standards and original songs, they’ve found that they can strike a chord across the globe.

‘We have a song on the last album called A Lovely Cup of Tea,’ David Eagle tells WOW247 about a recent gig in Australia. ‘It’s about some members of the English Defence League who were assuaged by some of the Islamic community when they protested outside a mosque in York. They were met with biscuits and an invitation to a game of football – they were invited into the mosque and they apparently went away with altered views and we thought this was a lovely gesture of peace and it says that minds can change.

‘We sang that song and it got to one of the lines where it talks about the football match. Something similar had happened in Australia but it hadn’t ended so peacefully, so we got to this line and the Australian audience broke out in spontaneous applause, like a standing ovation, and it went on for ages.

‘This is meant to be a comedy song almost, and it went down well in terms of laughter, which is the response we normally get. But in Australia this one time it was different.

‘I think the subjects are so universally applicable – we’re talking about things which are ubiquitous – and they were really able to relate to it.’

It’s been a curious path for the Stockton-on-Tees act. As teenagers, David, Sean Cooney and Michael Hughes stumbled across Stockton Folk Club in their local pub. And it could have all ended there, as the three were under age and were spotted by a former teacher of Sean and Michael.

‘We were 17 at the time. He saw us having a pint of beer and said: “You are old enough aren’t you, lads?” Sean just said yes, and that was all he needed, fortunately.

‘There maybe was a concern for parents about children drinking underage and what they might be getting up to as a result, but when they saw it was only leading us to our local folk club, I think that allayed any concerns they might have had.’

The three became regulars at the club and when one day someone said ‘let’s hear a song from the young’uns’, the name stuck. And they soon came to enjoy the unusual cache the folk club gave them.

‘It’s not that we were out of step with our friends, but when we invited them along to come and see this, they loved it. It was such a great culture to be part of and a unique thing.

‘There was something, for want of a better word, cool about finding this sub-cultural or counter-cultural – whatever you want to class it as – world that’s going on.

‘We were welcomed by these old men with beards and other stereotypes – here we were drinking beer with people who have all these amazing stories to tell and singing these songs. There’s something really good about it.

‘Our friends came along and were like, yeah, it’s a bit weird, but it’s good. It’s not like we were bullied for getting involved with folk music,’ he adds with a chuckle.