Sacrificing baths for showers is a false economy. Just ask Churchill

What value would you put on a relaxing hot bath? My usual answer would mimic the Mastercard ads of the late 1990s, voiced by dashing actor Jack Davenport (Generation X’s Nigel Havers) where a moment of serendipity was described as “priceless”.

The problem now is that Yorkshire Water has made a vexing attempt to assess the current price of slipping below the Radox suds. The company announced this week that running a bath three times a week is the priciest form of domestic hot-water usage, costing £542.88 in 2022 (up 79 per cent from 2021) and set to rise to £1023.36 in 2023.

The cheese-paring Yorkshire bods are therefore suggesting we all switch to showers instead. These are brutal tidings for those of us who eschew power showers and a way of life I’m going to dub “fast soaping”. My house has two bathrooms and the description is scrupulously accurate: they are windowed rooms with bathtubs in them, not the space-efficient walk-in cupboard that is the modern shower cubicle.

I’ve always felt claustrophobic in showers (more so after watching Psycho) because your visibility is limited by an overhead deluge. Moreover, you can easily use a shower attachment in a bath but you can’t magic up a bath attachment in a shower, so it’s a no-brainer which is more versatile.

But these are practicalities and the joy of a bath extends far beyond the utilitarian. No one knew this better than Winston Churchill, who was a lifelong champion of lounging in a tub full of water heated to 98F (once in, he’d notch it up by a sultry six degrees) and would requisition bathtubs in the most unpromising locations, including the trenches of Flanders.

He also liked to dictate from the bath, with his secretaries perched just outside an ajar door. During the energy crisis of 1947, Hugh Gaitskell, then minister of fuel and power in the Labour government, urged people to have fewer baths. The appalled former PM promptly asked the Speaker of the House of Commons if he would allow the word “lousy” to be used of the ruling party, “provided, of course, it was not intended in a contemptuous sense but purely as one of factual narration”.

It’s evident that Churchill, like Archimedes, found baths essential places for contemplation and inspiration. A more modern example of the submersion theory is Alex Horne, creator of the TV hit Taskmaster, who recently reminded fans that “I come up with lots of Taskmaster tasks in a hot tub”.

I also find that problems, whether work-related or emotional, start resolving themselves in a bathtub and that different bath oils set off different trains of thought. Dr Hauschka spruce bath essence is good for muscular resolution, whereas Penhaligon’s bluebell bath oil promotes dreamy flights of fancy. Baths are deeply healing too. Why dose winter viruses with a pitiless gush of overhead water, when nothing is as medicinal as lying in a tub with a glass of good whisky?

But if you really want to resolve the shower vs bath argument once and for all, just look at what guests require in a boutique hotel; the difference between an economy room and a superior one is almost always a freestanding roll-top bath. I can’t think of any more tacit admission that true refreshment means full submersion, preferably with your best loved.

In fact, when you tot up the value-added benefits of bathing, it’s clear that Yorkshire Water has erred in its analysis. The value of a soak is beyond any clear price. Now, where’s Jack Davenport when I need him?