When do the clocks go back? Why do we do it... and what do we hate most about it?

A survey of 1,000 bleary-eyed Brits revealed that nearly a quarter of us are woken by our body clocks, despite wanting to sleep through the extra hour.

Thirty per cent of us hate the fact that from Monday it will get dark before we leave work, and 16pc dislike having to manually adjust clocks which, unlike smartphones, don’t do it themselves.

A similar number worry about whether they’re looking at the old or new time, because they’re not sure which clocks have been updated.

One parent in 20 worries that their children will wake an hour early on Sunday because their body clocks don’t know the time has changed, and around one in 18 complain that changing the clocks will become their main topic of conversation for days beforehand.

It was during the First World War that we began adjusting the clocks to save precious daylight - and, save for World War Two and a brief period in the late 1960s, when we adopted “British Standard Time”, we’ve been doing it ever since.

The practice is by no means universal - around the world, nearly 100 countries have never used daylight saving time. In Europe, Belarus, Georgia and Iceland have abandoned the practice.

Britain is unlikely to follow their lead, however. The East Yorkshire MP and former Tory energy minister Sir Greg Knight is campaigning to end the “ridiculous ritual”, and has warned the nation will be plunged into “darkness and misery by mid-afternoon” once the clocks are changed.

Sir Greg wants the clocks to run two hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time during the summer - a system known as double summertime - and one hour ahead during winter.

Six years ago, David Cameron suggested he was ready to consider the proposal - but Commons Leader David Lidington now says “unity” across the nation is more important, and that the government has no plans “at the moment” to change the law.

Andrew Fraser from lighting retailer scotlightdirect.co.uk, which commissioned the new survey, said: “Some people do find the clocks going back an annoying, and even a depressing affair.

“This might seem bleak, but you still have Christmas to look forward to.”