After a wet, largely dismal spring the country is enjoying a summer which, to some, brings back memories of that of 1976. Then the temperature was in the 90s and water was in short supply in some areas it still is. JIM GREENHALF reports Summer in England means balmy weekends with the fragrant aroma of barbecues choking the air and the sound of nocturnal communal singing from karaoke hostelries.

It means exposed tattoos and flabby midriffs, and Yul Brynner heads burnished copper by the sun. And the men are even worse.

Barbies, karaoke, tattoos as fashion statements and convict-style crops were not widely in evidence 30 years ago. It would be tempting to sniffily say that people had more self-respect then; but loony flared trousers, The Wurzels and Elton John duetting with Bradford's Kiki Dee were the height of popularity among the young and impressionable.

The sun beat down without reprieve. Holidaymakers from the North turned up at Heathrow Airport and sunbathed. From June 23 to July 8 the airport had temperatures in excess of 30 degrees.

The long hot summer of 1976, which ended that September, is said to have resulted in the longest dry spell 16 months recorded in England and Wales since 1727.

This claim evidently takes no account of the torrential downpour that washed out the third day's play at Lords in the second Test of the summer between Tony Greig's England and Clive Lloyd's West Indies.

Greig had announced at the start of the five-match series that England had the players to make the Windies "grovel". We had some very fine players indeed Yorkshire's Brian Close for one, Bob Willis, Dennis Amiss, Derek Underwood, Greig and the immovable David Steele.

But they had Viv Richards, Gordon Greenwich, Roy Fredericks, Michael Holding, Andy Roberts and Wayne Daniel and England got burned. Richards scorched 829 runs in four matches and Greig's men lost the series 0-3 with two Tests drawn.

Keighley's Look North weatherman Paul Hudson was only five then, but he has researched that year. "Quite possibly it was the last golden summer we had, at least the last one that we will be allowed to look back on and enjoy," he says. There are too many doom-mongers around now for anyone to be able to enjoy anything for long.

"This May was the wettest one for 25 years. I remember going through Leeds Market and people were saying, Oh, the weather in this country is rotten'. Those same people are now saying it's too hot!"

But what about the rest of the summer. Will the "eye of heaven", as Shakespeare put it, shine as hotly in August?

"The feeling among my colleagues is that we are in for a good summer until the autumn with temperatures in August into the 80s," Paul adds. "Climate change experts think that the spell we are having now will become common by 2050; temperatures in the 80s will be normal."

The end of 1976 saw valiant heavyweight boxer Richard Dunn retire after losing to Joe Bugner. His most glorious defeat, however, happened on May 26 of that year, in Munich, when the Bradford scaffolder got into the ring with the Louisville Lip, Mohammed Ali. Ali, troubled only once or twice, systematically destroyed Dunn over five rounds. He walked away in good heart, however, better off by upwards of £100,000.

Global warming wasn't the issue it is now. In 1976 people were just glad to feel the sun on them every day. Few knew anything about skin cancer or heat stress which reportedly killed 25,000 old people in France in the summer of 2003.

Thirty years ago reservoirs were running low and standpipes in evidence, but few believed that the end was nigh. On July 2, however, the Labour Government of James Callaghan took emergency powers to control the water supply.

Former Sports Minister Denis Howell was given responsibility for the weather and was immediately nicknamed Minister for Rain'. Within ten days of his appointment the heavens opened and he was rechristened Minister for Floods'.

Bradford businessman John Pennington was 20 in 1976 and working as a wool auctioneer at the Wool Exchange.

"Thirty years ago I was heavily involved with Thornton Festival, which has been re-established this year as Thornton Gala. The festival, on a Sunday I think, was very well attended," he says.

"We had a mock battle on Hill Top. We got the Sealed Knot to come over and fire cannons at each other. They acted out the English Civil War. They arrived on the Saturday and camped overnight as opposing sides on the moors at Thornton."

Social historians are inclined to view 1976 as the calm before the storm the Winter of Discontent in 1978/79, the election of Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives, high inflation and interest rates followed by the manufacturing recession.

There were fewer murders nationally 565 compared with 859 in 2005. It was a world without mobile phones, personal computers or the internet. There were only three terrestrial TV channels and almost half the households in the country did not have a car.

Cars parked in streets were as likely to be outside rented houses because only about half the population were home owners.

However, 1976 was the year that a man named Steven Jobs set up a computer company called Apple. One man who noted the advances that were being in small computers was Barry Seal, a lecturer at Huddersfield Polytechnic and on the Open University at the time, as well as leader of Bradford Council's Labour Group.

"I was trying to persuade the council to go in for small computers linked together. They wanted a great big centralised one like the IBM they had for the payroll," Barry says.

"My memories of Bradford in 1976 are that the centre was more lively. There were big stores Debenhams, Brown Muffs, Woolworths and more high quality shops. There were also more professional firms of lawyers and stock-brokers that eventually went to Leeds.

"The council had £17m in reserves which could have been used to regenerate Bradford. In those days central government paid 63 per cent of local government's rates. Much more could have been done."

Thunderstorms may occur tonight and tomorrow, says Paul Hudson, but next week looks like a hot one.

"I love going home and sitting in the garden with a glass of wine," Paul says. But then he doesn't live in the vicinity of a karaoke pub.