Gareth Malone on why people are desperate to sing amid pandemic

Gareth Malone enlisted NHS workers including junior doctor Yasmin Khaliq for his new show

Choirmaster Gareth Malone says he saw "a real desperation for letting your hair down and being heard that I've not experienced before" when recruiting amateur singers to take part in his festive TV show.

People "bit my hand off in a way that I've not really felt before" because many have been through so much and had fewer chances to get together during the Covid pandemic, he says.

Malone gathered NHS workers and members of the public to perform for BBC Two's Blackburn Sings Christmas.

In the programme, he stages a concert for several thousand people at the town's Christmas lights switch-on, which took place at the end of November, just before Omicron concerns took off.

"I felt the need was greater than I've had in previous series," Malone tells BBC News.

Malone said it was "inspiring" to hear how people had helped each other in Blackburn

"That was really rewarding for me because you don't know when you rock up in these places whether it's going to feel like something rather silly or whether people are going to really want to get involved.

"From the two young girls right up to the elderly people who've been isolated, as soon as we called people up and said, 'We're going to do this, do you want to be involved?', they just bit my hand off in a way that I've not really felt before.

"I think that's because of the times we're living through."

'Inspiring' stories

The Lancashire town was chosen for Malone's latest TV programme because it has had some of the highest Covid rates in the country at times.

"Everyone's had a hard time over the last two years," he says. "I don't think anyone's really escaped it one way or another, but I do feel like Blackburn had a particularly intense time of it early on, in those days when there was no vaccine and it was very frightening.

"So it was very inspiring to hear about people who went that extra mile, like the NHS staff who would stay on after shift to hold the hands of people who were frightened."

A choir of health workers changed Good King Wenceslas to Good King Ambulance

Yasmin Khaliq, 25, who qualified as a junior doctor just before the pandemic began, is among those taking part in the programme.

"It's been the steepest learning curve ever," she says of working in a hospital over the past two years. "It was really difficult. I've had to change a lot and become a lot more resilient and a lot better under pressure."

In the show, Khaliq joins an NHS choir with fellow accident and emergency staff and an ambulance driver, and they change the Christmas carol Good King Wenceslas to Good King Ambulance.

Singing was "my own kind of therapy" and there was "a massive feeling of togetherness" at the performance, she explains.

'It brings out the best'

"It was amazing to be part of. It meant everything. It was a way of me looking after me after a really difficult year so that we can look after other people.

"You can't not be happy when you're singing. It brings out the best side in everyone and a feeling of togetherness. I think there's a lot of power in finding songs that really connect with how you're feeling. It can be quite therapeutic."

Others who signed up for the programme include Carole Davis, landlady of the Clifton Arms pub, who performs the opening lines of Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You.

"It was very moving," she says of the concert. "For the town, it just shows how important it is for everyone to stick together and help each other and how bad it's actually been on the whole."

Malone took part in a karaoke night with pub landlady Carole Davis

Davis, 58, has helped orchestrate community support during the pandemic, including keeping in contact with and dropping supplies to people on their own, organising milk deliveries for families, raising funds for the hospital and a care home, and sending fruit and radios to doctors and nurses.

The pandemic has been "pretty horrendous", she says. "But on the back end of that, I feel there's nothing better than the Blackburn community.

"They all get involved. They all help each other. It's been pretty hard for most people, especially the ones that live on their own, but we've kept in contact with each other."

The experience of the past two years has "brought us all closer together", she believes.

"If someone needs help, there's always someone out there. If we can't give the help, we always find someone who can, or someone can pass on numbers. Everybody knows that we can help each other as much as we can."

Malone says he has tried to strike the right balance in the programme between shining a light on what has happened in the town and not making it "too macabre, which is actually rather difficult because there are obviously lots of very sad stories".

"So we tried to focus on the positive ones, the ones that would inspire and lift spirits," he says.

Blackburn Sings Christmas is on BBC Two at 20:00 GMT on Thursday and on BBC iPlayer.