Brian Johnson has become the surprise champion of a little-known charity for people suffering from dementia. The AC/DC frontman reportedly rang up the Sporting Memories Network, based in the Yorkshire village of Topcliffe, to offer his encouragement and support for their ongoing work.

“It’s an absolutely amazing boost for a charity run by two people to receive a phone call from the singer of a group that has sold more than 200m records worldwide,” Tony Jameson-Allen, the organisation’s director, told the Northern Echo. Johnson allegedly called Sporting Memories “out of the blue” after hearing about their projects with older people, especially men, who are suffering from mental health problems. It’s an area with new relevance to Johnson and his band: rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young recently left AC/DC owing to his struggle with dementia.

Unlike certain better-known anti-dementia charities, the Sporting Memories Network is focused on treatment, not research: they “promote and develop the use of sporting memories to improve the wellbeing of older people”, particularly people suffering from dementia, depression and social isolation. In May, they received the Alzheimer’s Society’s prize for best national initiative, and yet the group is “running on fresh air”, Jameson-Allen said. “The cost of dementia nationally is estimated at being £26bn a year and that figure will double by 2030, so ... [please] give cost-effective Sporting Memories a ... crack at making this work.”

Speaking to a representative from Sporting Memories, Johnson told stories from his childhood in Dunston, Gateshead: visiting the site where Hughie Gallacher died, or going to see Newcastle play. “Being born in Dunston I was used to the quiet except very early in the morning when you heard all the miners and the workers walking up to the bus stops,” he recalled. “These guys with black faces and their caps all pulled sideways (which is why I always wore a cap as a nod to those men).”

AC/DC’s 15th studio album, Rock or Bust, will be released in late November. It is their first to be recorded without Young. “I wanted to call the album Man Down,” Johnson said in July. “But it’s a bit negative.”