SHOULD you find yourself in a traffic jam on the M4 this holiday weekend, you are contributing to a tradition stretching back at least 40 years.

As we mentioned in last week’s Remember When, about a Le Mans racing car being tested near Swindon, the M4 opened in late 1971.

In 1972, Easter Saturday fell on April 1, and our headline was: “M4 TANGLE WILL BE EVEN WORSE.”

“Swindon drivers heading west for Easter can expect huge traffic jams today,” wrote an Adver reporter in the gleeful tones of somebody obliged to spend their own Saturday at work.

“Both the AA and the RAC say the M4 through Wiltshire is very busy and traffic is steadily building towards Bristol.

“A seven mile jam was forecast for the Severn Bridge this evening.”

As if this were not enough to cheer up a reporter deprived of Grandstand with Frank Bough and World of Sport with Dickie Davies, we went on to quote an AA spokesman: “On Monday the problem will probably be much worse.”

In spite of Easter Saturday and April Fool’s Day being one and the same, there were no hoaxes in evidence, although we did report on the outcome of a strange Scottish incident in which a mysterious dead beast was discovered near the shore of Loch Ness.

It turned out to be a nine-foot elephant seal, native to the South Atlantic, which had been kept in a deep freeze for some time before being dumped. “I don’t know how long it’s been kept in a deep freeze but this has obviously been done by some human hand,” said a remarkably perceptive scientist who examined the animal.

The front page picture that day showed a young woman in Janis Joplin-style sunglasses among some flowers.

The caption said: “Valerie Gee, 18, of Elborough Road, Moredon, enjoys Easter crocuses, brief sunshine and fresh air during her time off in The Lawns, Swindon, yesterday. Valerie is a sales assistant in a fruiterer’s. She is interested in photography and yearns to travel.”

We hope she achieved her ambitions, and we’d love to know whether she remembers that impromptu photo session in the park.

Inside the paper, in the showbiz section, we reported on a visit by actor Reg Varney to Swindon, where he went to see his actress daughter, Jeanne, appear in popular musical Salad Days.

His name may not mean much to younger readers these days, but back in 1972 his was one of the most famous and beloved faces in the country thanks to his starring role in a sitcom called On the Buses. The show had well over 20m viewers. Reg Varney died in 2008, aged 92.

Going back another decade to Easter Saturday, April 21, 1962, there was no M4, so reporters had to use whatever material was available when it came to writing about holiday gloom on the roads.

Fortunately the weather half a century ago fitted the bill perfectly. “It’s a 3-D Easter – damp, dismal and deserted, says AA,” was the headline to the only local story on that day’s front page.

Readers were told: “‘Abnormally quiet’ was today’s early traffic report from an Automobile Association spokesman stationed at Beckhampton crossroads.

“If the weather stays dull and overcast without much sunshine then the roads may not become too busy.”