There are one or two levels in the Super Mario Bros 3 game where the sun is basically your enemy. It chases after you and occasionally takes a swing down to try and catch you. Many an hour during my childhood were spent frustratingly trying to thwart this enemy.

Well, at the moment, the sun is killing vinyl records. Or warping them, to be precise. This happened on a smaller scale in the UK last week, but is particularly noteworthy in the USA – currently experiencing one of the biggest heatwaves in its history. People are ordering new vinyl and discovering it’s unplayable when it arrives – and it’s causing problems for manufacturers who already have a lot on their plate.

This all reminds me of a story a guy told me years ago. He told me he had some gigs lined up in Ibiza in 1995. When he got there, he arrived in the middle of one of the hottest summers that the Balearic Islands had seen in decades. Upon opening the box, he discovered several vinyl records in an unshapely mess.

But there was no time to replace the records. He just had to do his set and hope for the best, much to the bemusement of other DJs who’d never seen vinyl like this before. Whenever the sound started playing up, he’d just start playing about with the filters – somehow creating an almost flange sound.

His friends nicknamed him Flange for years afterwards…