TEMPERATURES are dropping and the nights are drawing in.

It's not long now until the clocks go back meaning darker evening and winter is most definitely coming.

St Helens Star: JOn Snow

But on the plus side you can soon get an extra hour in bed and there's only 10 Mondays until Christmas.

When do the clocks go back this year?

The clocks go back at 2am on October 28.

This means we are then on Greenwich Mean Time.

Why do our clocks go back?

The clocks go forwards in summer on the last Sunday in March to British Summer Time, which gives us an extra hour in the evenings in summer.

However, this means the clocks then need to go back in the autumn to make up for this.

This always happens on the last Sunday in October.

When do the clocks go forwards again?

The clocks go forwards on March 31 next year.

If you ever forget, always remember the timeless saying: “Spring forward, fall backwards”.

Whose idea was it to put the clocks forwards and back?

American politician and inventor Benjamin Franklin first thought up the idea while in Paris in 1784 as he thought it would save on candles.

It actually arrived in the UK after Coldplay singer Chris Martin's great-great-grandfather, a builder called William Willett, thought it was a good idea too.

He encouraged people to get out of bed earlier through leaflets published in the early 1900s.

However, the idea was introduced a year after he died, with Daylight Saving Time being rolled out in the UK in 1916.