Look, before we get on to the likes of how the heat impacts the likes of you and me, can we just speak briefly about the Australian Open. I am totally obsessed with the tennis. I'm much later than my spouse to the addiction but I adore watching those players gather up all their strength and whack the ball over the net with all their might.

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I'm a sucker for a long rally and drop shots make me swoon. Listening to Jim Courier talk about top spin makes me think I really get the game. At least for two weeks a year.

So when I was watching those brilliant lunatics play in Melbourne on Tuesday on the hottest day of the century, I was both mesmerised and fearful they would drop dead on the spot. They are at work on that stinking of hottest days while many of us are sitting on our bums enjoying the incredible athleticism.

And it's probably down to Ollie Jay and his team that they don't drop dead on the spot. This bloke came to Australia from the UK 12 years ago and made heat his home. He now leads the Heat and Health Research Centre at the University of Sydney. Since he arrived, Australia has suffered five of the six hottest summers on record - and I reckon the one we are in might make it number seven. That, he says, gives some idea of the trajectory we are on. Hot and getting hotter. That's climate change for you.

He and his team developed the system which makes the Australian Open possible, even on 44-degree days. It's called the EMU, otherwise known as the Environmental Measurement Unit, which measures air temperature, humidity, radiant heat of the sun and wind speed in real time. It all feeds back from the courts around the Open back to a dashboard, more powerful than any racquet speed. That dashboard has the power to tell umpires when players should have drinks, ice towels and breaks. It can........

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