21st Century Folk: GP who nearly died from Covid becomes folk song hero

Down the centuries, folk singers have immortalised the lives of everyday characters, from sailors to scoundrels to working-class heroes.

Now, a new set of folk heroes have had their stories sung by modern musicians.

They include a long-serving GP who almost died of Covid, a soup kitchen manager, and a woman who set up a charity in memory of her late daughter.

Songs about them by artists like Chris Difford and Thea Gilmore feature in BBC Radio 2's 21st Century Folk project.

All five people who feature in the new songs are from the north-east of England.

They include Dr Iftikhar Lone, who has been a GP in Middlesbrough for 44 years and was in charge of the Covid vaccine rollout in his area.

However, he spent nine days in intensive care after catching the virus himself in 2020.

"When I got Covid in the very first wave when there was no treatment, I was nine days in ICU then another seven days in hospital before I came out, after losing 16lb in weight and lucky to be alive," the 75-year-old says.

"I do not know what the cost of that treatment was. You go in, get treatment, you come out, and you don't worry about the cost. And I think that's a great thing. So therefore the song says, 'Free NHS for all.'"

Sean Cooney of Stockton-on-Tees band The Young'uns has turned his story into a song called Doctor Boro, combining his passions for the NHS and Middlesbrough FC.

Dr Lone adds: "I was surprised that he covered everything that we talked about. He really captured everything in it."

Only one thing in the song didn't really happen, he points out. When he met the Queen to get an MBE in 2006, her handbag didn't actually bear the letters UTB - short for the football slogan Up The Boro.

Cooney says being paired with Dr Lone "was tremendously good fun".

"He's quite a character and he's got a dry sense of humour, and half the time you're not quite sure if he's joking or not," he says. "I don't know what his patients think!"

But capturing the doctor's life in a song presented "a challenge" about how to combine healthcare and football.

Then "suddenly something clicked", he says. "I thought, let's create a character for him. Let's marry those two things immediately in the title and in the character and let's call it Doctor Boro."

Cooney believes the resulting song is "very current and very resonant".

"Dr Lone talks about the huge crisis that the NHS is under at the minute, and there's a line in the song where I say, 'Summer's turned to winter.'

"That reflected what he told me in his office in September - it's like a winter crisis, but it's happening all year round."

The 21st Century Folk project is intended as a modern version of the BBC's groundbreaking Radio Ballads, in which folk singer Ewan MacColl wrote about ordinary British people in the late 1950s and early '60s.

The new versions will be featured on the Radio 2 Folk Show with Mark Radcliffe on Wednesday.