A song by a Great Yarmouth duo has climbed to the top of an iTunes downloads chart after being dedicated to NHS staff battling the spread of coronavirus.

Eastern Daily Press: Hannah Long and John Galea's song 'Hero Within You' topped an iTunes download chart. Picture: ZamNa Media.Hannah Long and John Galea's song 'Hero Within You' topped an iTunes download chart. Picture: ZamNa Media. (Image: LMD)

‘Hero Within You’, written by John Galea and co-performed by Hannah Long, is among the most listened to songs on the platform’s singer-songwriter category this week.

The musicians, who went to drama school together in Gorleston, recorded the song last year.

But its lyrics - ‘Don’t give up when you’re feeling down, there’s a hero within you’ - have taken on new meaning as the country, and in particular its doctors and nurses, deals with the threat of the pandemic.

A former pupil of Caister High School who has supported bands like Mcfly and Boyzlife, Mr Galea, 32, had cancer as a teenager.

He said: “The NHS staff helped me in my teenage years overcoming cancer, and I knew when this crisis started that they would be on the frontline.

“The clapping for them showed people’s appreciation and I thought this would be a good way of showing ours.

“The track was written in inspiration of overcoming tough times. I wanted to write an uplifting track to give hope to those struggle,” he said.

A video was released on March 20 and nine days later the song had soared to the top of the singer-songwriter chart on iTunes in the UK.

The track reached a peak of 77 on the Official iTunes UK Chart.

“People are looking for a bit of hope and the song has a positive uplifting message,” Mr Galea said.

Hannah Long, 33, said the song “seems to really resonate with everything going on in the news at the moment, and the staff at the NHS working above and beyond their duty, they really are heroes”.

Mr Galea was diagnosed with an aggressive form of lymph gland cancer non-Hodgkins disease when he was 15.

He was performing in a play at Gorleston’s Pavilion Theatre when he began to feel unwell.

He was admitted to the James Paget Hospital, Gorleston, and had to undergo a gruelling stint of chemotherapy.

At 19 he headed to London to pursue a music career and won a national singer/songwriter award judged by Charlotte Church’s ex-manager Jonathan Shalit and a panel of industry insiders.