Isolating older people are turning to social media to stay in touch with family – and some have gained global fame with uplifting videos of life under lockdown.
All over the country, those used to a busy social life are instead communicating online.
Many over-70s were given a crash-course in using Facebook and apps like WhatsApp by children and grandchildren before having to shut themselves away.
And some have made the most of it, winning armies of fans by sharing footage of them singing or dancing indoors.
Like Rex and Selina Taylor, aged 86 and 83, whose video of them singing Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again was shared more than a million times after it was posted on Facebook.
The couple, from Ripley, Derbys, who have been married for 63 years, have received fan mail from as far afield as New Zealand and Australia.
Another loved-up pair of octogenarians, Isabel and Richard Ashton, of Little Hulton, Gtr Manchester, warmed the hearts of thousands after filming themselves dancing to the Christy Moore song Voyage.
Daughter Allison Sherrington explained how her parents, aged 83 and 85, who have 11 grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren, posted the videos because “all you hear is bad news”.
She said: “They wanted to show that life is still good.
“We set them up with an Alexa so they could keep in touch. But they used it to find ‘their’ song, then started dancing.
“It’s been liked by over 10,000 people and they’re loving reading all the comments.”
Alwyn Frost, 71, is also basking in the limelight with renditions of music hall classics, where she sings and plays the piano.
The grandmother-of-one, from Hemingford Grey, Cambs, plays piano for the Huntingdon Music Hall Society.
And she decided to start live online performances after members begged her to entertain them while in isolation.
Songs include We’ll Meet Again and First World War song Keep the Home Fires Burning.
Alwyn said: “Someone suggested I did a little gig on Facebook and the rest is history.
“I decided to perform war songs because these times have been likened to the war years. The reaction has been great, I’ve had loads of requests.”
North of the border, former surgeon Donald Macdonald, 76, has won plaudits after posting a coronavirus version of Scottish children’s ditty Ye Cannae Shove Yer Grannie off a Bus.
Entitled Ye Cannae Keep Yer Grannie in a Hoose, it describes his wife, Joan, escaping lockdown at their Edinburgh retirement home and getting caught “on the loose” by the police. His daughter, Sarah Muir, said: “My dad always sang comic songs to us as children, and he wanted to cheer people up in isolation.
“The response has been fantastic, so many people saying that it had made a difference to their day.”
Meanwhile, others in their 80s have put younger ones to shame with their energetic living room videos.
Johnny and Carmel Kierens, both 80, from Drogheda, Ireland, recorded themselves disco dancing to the Bee Gees’ Stayin’ Alive.
When they shared the video online it quickly went viral and has racked up over 8,000 likes so far. And 80-year-old grandmother-of-three Lillian, from Barnoldswick, Lancs, danced her blues away.
She filmed herself boogying to rock song Hollywood Nights in her living room.
Daughter Carolynne Thurlbeck said: “My dad died in Decem-ber and she was feeling a bit low, so I suggested she danced around the living room to cheer herself up.
“She did cheer herself up, but then she posted it online and cheered up a lot of other people too.”
