We're acting like it's wartime | Blaise Tapp

I have spent half my life walking around with my flies undone and 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 – the fear of running out of toilet roll.

It can only be a matter of time before the military is called in to patrol the supermarket toilet roll aisles.

On first hearing about this craziness, I thought it was isolated cases in backward towns where people still point at planes in the sky.

That was until I went shopping and discovered that 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.

You don’t have to look far to see that shoppers are ignoring official advice not to panic buy, with pasta and rice also being swept off the shelves.

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

Experts in irrational behaviour say panic buying is the result of people trying to take control in times of uncertainty but filling the boot of a Renault Clio with Fray Bentos pies and Cup-a-Soups is lunacy.

Nobody knows what is going to happen in the coming days, weeks and months but it is one hell of an overreaction to stockpile provisions like we are living in wartime London.

We live in one of the most prosperous nations on earth; a place where we can lay our hands on any food we desire.

We will be fine. We have a right to be a little concerned but acquiring a lifetime’s supply of loo roll will solve nothing.