Three Scarborough women part of Gareth Malone's worldwide choir which has released EP to raise funds for NHS Charities

At least three of the 11,000 members of the now worldwide choir Denise Earnshaw, Naomi Maxwell and Claire.Davidson live in Scarborough.

They have spent every weekday at 5.30pm rehearsing with Gareth on YouTube, with the help of Decca, in his garden shed/studio for 14 weeks.

"He gave up his time and became a lifeline for a lot of us. Even when feeling down Gareth cheered us up with his antics, stories of his growing tomatoes and occasionally doing the congo round his studio.We had great fun doing 'Warm-up' exercises with Gareth and other Musical Celebrities before learning lots of different songs," said Denise.

"On VE Day we sang some of Vera Lynn's songs White Cliffs of Dover, A Nightingale Sang and We'll Meet Again, but eventually we learnt four main songs, You Are My Sunshine, I'm Still Standing by Elton John, Ordinary World by Duran Duran, and Somewhere Only We Know by Keane who also helped with our musical warm-ups on one occasion - Gareth chose these particular songs because they related to the times we were going through and gave us hope," she said..

"Eventually we recorded these songs, virtually from our own homes. Recording them wasn't easy. We had to listen to a backing track with Gareth singing 'our part' through our earplugs attached to our computers while videoing ourselves singing on our phones.

"The London Symphony Orchestra had to record virtually from their own homes as well, as we now knew an EP of these songs was going to be made.

"I don't know how many times I recorded each song before I was satisfied it was as good as possible before sending them to Decca," said Denise who has not been in a choir since she was at School.

Claire is a single mum of a young child who can't normally attend a choir. It's a hobby she's missed, so she said to join an online choir was an amazing opportunity.

Naomi is a member of the Staxton Singers which she has greatly missed during Lockdown. Decca then had the job of putting each voice together to make it sound like the songs had been recorded in the Studio. You really can't tell the difference.

Meantime Gareth also got us involved in another project, which was to help out with the chorus of a song written by 16 year old Rae-Kwan which was being sung on BBC2 on his programme The Choir, Singing for Britain. We only had to record our voices this time.

The EP was released on July 31 with the main track You Are My Sunshine going into the charts the following week.

No Royalties have been taken and all the profits are going to NHS Charities Together/

If you want to support the NHS please think about buying the EP which is £5.99 from Decca or downloading it from Spotify, iTunes or Amazon.

"It's been a great experience and a great privilege to be part of this and our thanks go to Gareth for helping us to achieve something we never thought was possible whilst raising money for the NHS which is giving 'their all'," said Denise.