BLAISE TAPP - Fear rolling out across the UK

Everybody has a worst nightmare, be it calling the teacher ‘mum’ or accidentally sending a job application email to your current boss.

Although I have spent half of my time this on earth walking around with my flies undone, it doesn’t get any less embarrassing.

But, at this present moment in time, there is clearly only one thing keeping millions of, otherwise sensible, people up at night and it isn’t four more years of Trump, let alone another season of VAR.

No, the thing playing on the minds of grown-ups everywhere is the fear of running out of toilet roll.

Although the military hasn’t yet been called into supermarkets to ensure everybody takes their fair share of family-size packs of double quilted, it can only be a matter of time.

In arguably the strangest twist of the coronavirus panic, it appears the masses have decided loo roll is the thing to stock up on, meaning shelves have been cleared of the stuff.

On first hearing about this craziness, I thought the examples we had seen on news bulletins and social media were isolated cases in backward towns where people still point at planes in the sky above them.

That was until I went shopping last week and discovered the world really has lost its mind - before quickly snaffling the second-to-last nine pack of super soft white.

In order to make sure I hadn’t properly lost my marbles, I got chatting to the bewildered-looking chap on checkout five of my local budget German store, who duly recounted the story of one woman who, two days earlier, had filled her trolley with 54 packets of loo roll.

Either she shares her home with an entire rugby team or she truly believes we are nearing the end of days. We all know strange times prompt strange behaviour but this compulsion to fill up sheds and utility rooms full of velvet soft tissue paper is taking bonkers to a new level.

This hunger for non-perishables is even more surprising when you consider it was less than six months ago when many were filling cupboards with stuff they could subsist on in the event of a No Deal Brexit.