A skinny-dipping Tory MP, M1 melts and Kenneth Williams boils: Britain’s 1976 sweltering heatwave

The Tarmac on the M1 melted.

Hundreds of thousands of people collected water in buckets from emergency tankers — and the Minister for Drought, Denis Howell, urged us all to ‘bath with a friend’.

JONATHAN MAYO examines the diaries of some who recorded the UK’s 1976 heatwave. 

File photo dated 16 August 1976 of 19-year-old model Cerica, tanning herself in the dried up basin of Pitsford Reservoir in Northamptonshire, to show just how little water was left

Alan Clark, FLAMBOYANT Tory MP 

Then aged 48, the lothario was an ambitious MP making a name for himself on the backbenches — long before becoming famously embroiled in a sex scandal in which he was accused of seducing the wife of a South African judge and her two daughters.

The Tory Whips called him ‘the most dangerous man in the Commons’.

Clark’s diary contained his honest and often outrageous thoughts. At the start of the summer, he revelled in the heat: ‘Another glorious morning. Does London have the finest weather in England?’ But he soon found the Commons too hot and oppressive.

By June 22, he had found the perfect place to work: ‘Sitting in a new perch I’ve discovered, theoretically allocated to a member of the staff and (tidily) congested with his gear, it is pleasingly situated in a corner . . . beside no fewer than three open windows, so the lazy fresh river smells of wet varnish and tidal aromas come in together with the sounds of the chuggy engines of tugs and pleasure craft and the occasional guffaw from the terrace below.’

The same day, he recorded returning to Saltwood Castle, his stately home in Kent. ‘As I lay by the pool, thought how diminished (by earlier standards) was my sexuality. Always in the past I would get erotic sensations lying out after a ‘dip’.’ He blamed lack of sleep.

Clark prudently made his handwriting deliberately illegible in case he lost the diary as he travelled to and from Westminster.

Kenneth Williams, CARRY ON ACTOR 

Save Water was the message of the day. Carry On star Kenneth Williams was not a fan of the heat which he called the sort of weather one loves on a holiday and loathes in London'

Save Water was the message of the day. Carry On star Kenneth Williams was not a fan of the heat which he called the sort of weather one loves on a holiday and loathes in London’

It’s late afternoon on June 25, 1976. The temperature in London is more than 30c and Williams is angry. He can’t bear the heat. The play in which he’s appearing is a flop and he has just been shouted at in the street.

That night, when he gets home, he pours out his frustration in his diary. ‘The boiling sun is relentless: the sort of weather one loves on a holiday and loathes in London. To the theatre through sweltering streets, everyone standing outside pubs holding beer in their hands.’

The weather proved a nightmare for old-fashioned West End theatres with no air conditioning and audiences stayed away.

Williams wrote: ‘In Titchfield Street [in Central London], they shouted: ‘Don’t go in tonight, Kenny! There’ll be no bugger there!’

After a performance at the Comedy Theatre, Williams wrote: ‘The auditorium was a sea of waving programmes and dreadful humid heat . . . the sweat pouring off everyone.’

The nights were particularly bad and sleep was almost impossible. In bed, Williams resorted to covering himself with only one sheet and moaned: ‘It’s still uncomfortable!’

In August, the Labour government appointed Denis Howell as the Minister for Drought. Williams was not impressed. ‘Government has appointed that fool Howell (Minister of Sport!!) to be Minister of Water . . .’

Howell urged ‘concerned neighbours’ to report anyone breaking the water restrictions, in secret if they had to. He was accused of encouraging an ‘un-British informer culture’.

Williams had his own way of saving water, writing in his diary on August 25: ‘I am not bathing. Just washing in a basin.’

Michael Palin, Monty Python star 

Londoner Dave Pike washes his car using water from the Thames at Putney, during Britain's worst drought for 250 years. Comedian Michael Palin said the heat frayed tempers on the set of Jabberwocky 

Londoner Dave Pike washes his car using water from the Thames at Putney, during Britain’s worst drought for 250 years. Comedian Michael Palin said the heat frayed tempers on the set of Jabberwocky 

At first, most people didn’t take the sunny weather too seriously. On May 10, Palin wrote in the diary he had been keeping since 1969 that he was bemused by his sister-in-law ‘going around putting bricks in the cisterns’.

In fact, she was following official advice to reduce water use by displacing some water in the toilet tank with a brick, which allowed people to get the same flush pressure, but use up to half a gallon less water per flush.

T-shirts and car stickers proclaimed ‘Save Water, Bath With A Friend’. With very little rain since February, a Water Bill was rushed through Parliament that allowed the Government to control supplies. Schools and businesses had to close early at times because of the water rationing.

Throughout the summer, Palin was filming fellow Python Terry Gilliam’s comic fantasy Jabberwocky at Shepperton Studios in Surrey. The bright, sunny days were good for filming — but tempers frayed.

On August 26, Palin recorded in his diary how actor Warren Mitchell raged at a member of the crew who accidentally trod on his hand.

Even mild-mannered Palin lost it a few hours later while filming a scene where he had to run carrying a large, unwieldy backpack.

An unscripted interruption made him ‘turn and stop and bitterly throw my pack down’. But it turned out that the interruption had only been a mischievous intervention by Gilliam.

After another long day’s filming, Palin wrote: ‘Home about 8.30. Wash away the day’s grot. Then Helen [his wife], in keeping with the drought spirit that has gripped the land, waters the flowers with my bathwater.’

Tony Benn, energy secretary

The Prime Minister at the time was Jim Callaghan and his Minister for Energy was Tony Benn.

The Left-winger was a prolific diarist and, by early June, the heat had introduced an unfamiliar informality to Westminster.

On June 9, Benn had lunch with Foreign Secretary Anthony Crosland and remarked in his diary: ‘He had his jacket off and was in his blue and white striped shirt, with his shoes off . . .’

By July, most of Britain was recording temperatures of more than 32c every day. From June 22 to July 16, somewhere in the UK exceeded 25c every day. The hottest day was July 3, when temperatures hit 35.9c.

It was reported that tourists in London were becoming increasingly militant and refusing to pay extortionate prices for ice creams and cold drinks. On a sun-baked Centre Court at Wimbledon on July 3, Bjorn Borg beat Ilie Nastase in the men’s singles final in temperatures of over 40c.

The following Tuesday, Benn wrote in his diary how that day’s Cabinet meeting, with all the men in shirtsleeves, reminded him of his very first Cabinet meeting ten years earlier, during the hot July of 1966. On both occasions, their agenda was dominated by an economic crisis.

There was no relief even at his house in Stansgate, Essex. ‘Still unbelievably hot. It’s been in the 80s or 90s for about a month now and the grass is absolutely brown.’

James Lees-Milne, leading historian 

The author filled his gossipy diaries with stories about meeting the owners of country houses as he travelled across England saving properties for the National Trust.

He had a particularly memorable encounter while staying with an elderly friend, the Bloomsbury Group artist Eardley Knollys.

‘Wednesday July 7. Heatwave continuing. Found E naked but for a pair of long blue shorts, his white skin, his flabby muscles, pendulous breasts, looking like Picasso aged 90. I must have expressed my nausea by my looks . . .’

After Lees-Milne wrote in his diary on August 28 about how he and his wife were saving water — ‘we have fixed up a large plastic tub outside my bathroom into which all the water for washing ourselves and the china goes’ — he wrote despairingly: ‘We wonder if it will ever rain again . . .’

Peter Hall, theatre director 

As director of the National Theatre in London, Hall was deeply frustrated because the Olivier auditorium hadn’t been built on time and the stage staff were on strike. In desperation, on August 3, he decided to hold a rehearsal for a production of Christopher Marlowe’s play Tamburlaine out in the sunshine.

Hall wrote in his diary that night: ‘Revelation. Denis Quilley [the great Shakespearean actor] immediately started talking to bystanders, and his performance became free, open . . . there have been many attempts to re-create Elizabethan stage, but has anyone understood that the basic thing about Elizabethan theatre is that it was played in daylight?’

Gyles Brandreth, TV personality 

On September 3, the weather finally changed. Some areas of South West England had their first rain for 45 days. Brandreth remarked in the diary he had been keeping since he was a boy: ‘PS: it rained today. This is news simply because this has been England’s hottest summer for a century.’

That same night, Kenneth Williams wrote, too, with great relief: ‘I am using three blankets now! The weather has changed completely, thank goodness!’

 



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