Every great charity appeal needs a soundtrack. Comic Relief and Children in Need always have singles to go with their fundraising nights. The anti-poverty efforts in the Eighties and the 2000s had Band Aid – as did the Ebola appeal, six years ago.
And so it seems only right that the coronavirus pandemic has its own theme tune, too.
It would need to be something catchy. It would need to reflect the extraordinary and often quite bizarre circumstances we’re living in. It would need to be a bit of a laugh, because we could all do with one. And, ideally, it might benefit from having a little star power behind it, if only to nudge it into the public consciousness a little.
Enter comedian and writer Tony Hawks, who has come up with just the thing.
“I’m quite good at generating things to do when nothing much is happening,” he says. “As a freelance performer, I’m kind of used to it.”
For Hawks, this spring was supposed to be business as usual: a mix of theatre work and live shows, recording radio comedy panel shows such as I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue and Just A Minute, and writing. When all that was put on hold, he had some spare time to idle around in his Devon home, thinking.
Early last week, Hawks was doing just that, specifically fiddling around making silly songs at the piano – a lifelong habit that led to a number 4 in the UK singles chart in 1988 for his band Morris Minor and the Majors, with the Beastie Boys parody “Stutter Rap (No Sleep til Bedtime)”.
He had heard the word “lockdown” thrown around a lot in the news and on social media lately, and so a nifty refrain came into his head. A few observations about our new, limited existence – such as enlivening a walk to the post office by trying it in shorts – became the basis for some wry verses. A bit of a drumbeat was added; a splash of synths. Within a few hours, he’d recorded a full song.
Tony Hawks at home in Devon – Jay Williams/Telegraph
“Pretty much immediately after I’d finished it, an email came in explaining the Telegraph’s Coronavirus Appeal, and it’s something I’d been thinking about – that this will be so much harder for lots of people, and if there’s one positive we can take it’s that we’re all in this together, trying to help each other in whatever way we can. So I wondered if the song might help.”
Hawks’s song, “Lockdown”, is out now, with proceeds going to the Telegraph Coronavirus Appeal. Thanks to our readers’ extraordinary generosity, more than £730,000 has now been raised for Turn2us, a charity providing emergency grants for people in the UK who have been hardest hit financially by the Covid-19 crisis, and hopefully now far more can be raised with the extra awareness his song creates.
There’s an unmissable, viral-ready video, too. When Hawks decided to release the song online, he also opened his black book. After more than 30 years in comedy, he knows dozens of household names, so he sent them one simple request: could they film themselves looking as bored as possible for five or so seconds?
It turned out that the great and good of television and radio comedy (plus a few miscellaneous others) could just about spare the time. The resulting three-minute video for ‘Lockdown’ – which you can watch above – is a golden compilation of lethargy: famous faces from all industries showing they’re just as fed up with quarantine as the rest of us.
A rugby-shirted Stephen Fry’s there, silk dressing gown hanging up behind him, looking weary in his bedroom. Rob Brydon has nothing to do but sigh in his extraordinarily clean kitchen. Sandi Toksvig knits, with her woolly (possibly knitted?) dog at her feet. YouTuber Tanya Burr, who knows a thing or two about making videos in her own home, triumphantly finishes a jigsaw puzzle. Campaigner and Strictly star Katie Piper lifts weights in her conservatory. Broadcaster Richard Madeley looks suspiciously tanned, as ever. Somebody may need to check on Sir Tim Rice, who appears stuck on his stairs.
Then – between clips of Hawks singing in the Devon countryside around his home – there’s Jack Dee, David Coulthard, opera star Danielle de Niese, Alexander Armstrong, David Baddiel and a host of other celebrities in on the fun. They’re all in lockdown, and clearly all game for a laugh in the name of charity.
Hawks, who will admit that he is over 50 but doesn’t “like age as a concept” so you’ll have to guess based on the photographs, never considered making the song serious. In the early 1980s, he started his career as a singer-songwriter, but “at times like this, I think people need something light. It’s just a bit like someone going: ‘Right, I’ve been to Sainsbury’s – what now?’ Which is something we have all felt, at some point or another. It’s just a gentle, fun thing, and I hope kids like it, too.”
Gentle comedy is clearly something people have an appetite for. The most successful viral videos of the lockdown period, such as the Marsh family’s Les Misérables spoof or US singer Chris Mann’s parody of Adele’s ‘Hello’ (“Hello… from the inside…”), tend to have poked fun at our temporary confinement. On the other hand, Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot’s hyper-earnest Hollywood all-star version of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’, compiled by celebrities in their huge mansion complexes, was widely derided as awful, because it was.
“It’s nice that people can be creative and do stuff at the moment, but ‘Lockdown’ isn’t earnest or soppy, because that doesn’t seem right. I can’t stand that, the thing about ‘We all need to be seen to be caring’ – that American showbiz thing, sitting in mansions somewhere. Mine is just a bloke with nothing to do. Simple as that.”
A “bloke with nothing to do” is exactly what Hawks is at the moment. He has a seven-year-old son, Arlo, who lives nearby with his ex-partner, but otherwise he lives alone and, like many of us, is twiddling his thumbs.
“I’m coping all right, but some people are really re-evaluating everything, aren’t they? Spending more time with their kids, thinking again, going, ‘What is life?’ I’ve actually got a bit less time than I had, as my son isn’t in school, but it’s nice, we’re getting used to it, and we really are all in it together.”
Hawks has the company of his dog, Coco, in Devon – Jay Williams/Telegraph
He’s up for giving a live-streamed performance if there’s appetite for it, may consider doing a follow-up song (“Let’s hope Bob Geldof doesn’t do one…”), and would like a series of videos for ‘Lockdown’, featuring everyone from politicians (“Imagine Jacob Rees-Mogg!”) to newsreaders stuck with nothing to do.
“What I’d really like is a load of serious, big actors at home bored. Something about that is really funny to me. But we’ll see. I think we have plenty of time for ideas…”
For a man who professes to be mindlessly bored, Hawks’ productivity is putting us all to shame. Let history record it: Shakespeare wrote King Lear in quarantine. Newton discovered gravity. And Tony Hawks, in the great pandemic of 2020, penned ‘Lockdown’, a charity single, in just a day.
Now it’s our job to spread the song far and wide, to keep raising money for those who so desperately need it, and to keep finding reasons to smile and help one another in this time of crisis. If we can do that, as the song goes, “it’ll be September before you know it.”
To make a donation to the Telegraph Coronavirus Appeal please visit telegraph.co.uk/appeal or call 0151 284 1927 (Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm)