Anyone who has endured London’s Central Line during the heatwave will doubtless sympathise with their fellow commuters in Vienna, where things have got so bad the authorities have started handing out free deodorant on the city’s U-Bahn trains.

While London Underground gave out free water to help travellers cope with its sauna-like trains in 2016, in Austria it appears the public transport company is more concerned with unsavoury odours.

Staff handed out free deodorants to passengers on Vienna’s notoriously stuffy U6 line this week, and it appears the initiative was popular: the entire stock of 14,000 deodorant sprays was grabbed in a single day, and plans for a second distribution have had to be shelved.

The deodorants were “torn out of our hands,” Daniel Amman, a spokesman for the Wiener Linien public transport company said.

But he insisted Viennese commuters were no smellier than those anywhere else. “This was primarily intended as a consolation,” he said. “High temperatures can also make one more aware of odours.”

Temperatures of 35C have been recorded on Vienna’s U6 — just shy of the Central Line’s 35.5C, but still well beyond the EU limit of 30C for transporting cattle.

But the situation on most of Vienna’s U-Bahn system is considerably more comfortable London’s Tube. Most of the lines are air conditioned, and only on the ageing U6 do passengers still have to endure the heat.