Every Thursday evening, I’ve been as enthusiastic a clapper for our carers as anyone, tooting my car horn to help remind the neighbours it’s about to start and then banging on the car roof and saucepans to add to the noise in our cul-de-sac.

The weekly ritual is a great expression of national support for NHS staff and other carers who are risking their lives to care for patients stricken by the coronavirus.

As someone with family members and relatives who work in the NHS, and with friends whose children work on the front line – our hospital's intensive care units – I think it’s a wonderful idea and one I hope can be maintained through the coming weeks and months.

But I still feel there’s something missing from our doorstep handclaps every Thursday evening - music and song.

The scenes of lockdowned Italians singing from their balconies last month were incredibly moving and I feel we could do it here as well.

I have been invited to many funerals over the years in my job as Chief Reporter, often those of young people who have died long before their time. They’re terribly sad occasions, of course, but it’s nearly always when they play the late teenager’s favourite song that the full sorrow is unleashed and tears flow uncontrollably down people's cheeks: the music is cathartic, and that can be very useful in a society used to buttoning up its emotions.

But which song would be the best one to sing and how could it be sung it most effectively - so loud that the doctors, nurses and healthcare assistants on the frontline of the ICUs, and back in their homes after a gruelling, traumatising shift dealing with suffering and death on an almost unimaginable scale, will hear it and perhaps gain some comfort from knowing that we are supporting them all the way.

Well, there’s one song that stands out a mile for me: You'll Never Walk Alone, the song from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel which became a hit in 1963 for Gerry and the Pacemakers, and was subsequently adopted by football fans, particulary Liverpool's, as a terrace anthem.

It pains me as a Man Utd fan to refer to this, but its incredible rendition throughout half-time at the 2005 Champions League final has gone down in Liverpool folklore, helping to revive a team which seemed beaten at 3-0 down and went on to an astonishing victory: this is what music can do.

The song has apparently already been adopted as a world-wide anthem to show support for and encouragement to medics battling Covid-19.

And it gave me goosebumps when I heard an extraordinarily moving rendition in 2018 at York Minster of all places, at a service commemorating the 70th anniversary of, yes, you’ve got it – the NHS, attended by luminaries including the then Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if people across the nation were to sing lyrics which talk of holding your head up high while you walk through a storm, and tell of the 'golden sky at the end of the storm,' and ‘the sweet silver song of a lark,’ climaxing with a chorus of:“Walk on, walk on, With hope in your heart. And you'll never walk alone.”

So here’s an idea: how about, every Thursday evening after say a minute’s clapping for carers, we all play this song, or maybe different songs on future Thursdays – David Bowies’ ‘Heroes’ springs immediately to mind for another week...

And if you like the idea, how could it best be coordinated, and loud enough for the NHS heroes everywhere to hear?

Maybe by going to Youtube for a recording of Gerry’s hit song? But even better would be if it was played on the radio – maybe BBC Radio York and Minster FM locally, and BBC Radio 1 and 2 nationally. And then we could lean through the car window and switch on our radios and blast out this song, not only in a show of support for our heroes but also a display of mass defiance to this vile virus which is killing so many people and destroying many more people’s livelihoods and lives. What do readers think: Shall we suggest it to the broadcasters?