Woman claims to have cooked egg in hot car during heatwave

‘It only took 20 minutes,’ says Jill Hemsbury

Jill Hembury says the inside of the Honda Civic reached more than 45C – the limit of her thermometer (Jill Hembury / SWNS)

Britain’s heatwave is so extreme that a woman was able to fry an egg inside her car.

Jill Hembury placed the egg in a milk pan on the dashboard of her Honda Civic on Monday, as temperatures topped 38C.

The 62-year-old gardener from St Werburgs, Bristol, said: “Walking out of the front door is like walking out of an aeroplane in Spain.

“The egg only took 20 minutes to cook.”

Using a 1940s thermometer to measure the heat, Ms Hembury claimed her 32-year-old Honda Civic was at least 45C inside.

She said: “The thermometer actually went off the top when I placed it on the dashboard – it went to 4C and then wouldn’t go any further.”

She explained that the experiment was a tradition in her family.

The grandmother-of-eight added: “When we were kids we used to have these terracotta tiled windowsills and they used to get red hot.

“We used to try cooking eggs on there with varying success.

“So I thought it would be fun to show my grandchildren these pictures.”

The egg took about 20 minutes to cook, Ms Hembury said (Jill Hembury / SWNS)

Ms Hembury said that on Tuesday – slated to be even hotter – she planned to attempt to cook salmon and scrambled eggs in the Civic.

She added: “I would cook it all on the bonnet but there’s no way it would have lasted with all the seagulls we have around it.”

Temperatures on Tuesday were expected to top 40C in the UK, a scenario that one meteorologist admitted “doesn’t seem real”.

As Britons battled the searing heat, one Buckinghamshire resident shared a tip for keeping the house cooler by using foil emergency blankets.

The trick can keep temperatures up to 4C lower, Jay Virdee said.

SWNS