Supermarkets throughout Britain continued to report panic buying of vanilla products by their customers today following Tuesday's news from the island of Madagascar that the dreaded Melpona Beetle has destroyed an estimated 95% of this season's crops of the vanilla producing orchid pods. Stocks of tins and packets of custard powder were nowhere to be found by this afternoon causing extra demand to be placed on tins of ready made custard. Only vanilla ice-cream seemed to remain unwanted believed due to the cold Easter weather predicted for this weekend.
Police had to be called to several supermarkets around the country after fights broke out in supermarket aisles as desperate housewives tried to grab the last remaining stocks of custard powder from the shelves. And at a supermarket in East London this morning armed robbers forced staff at one supermarket to fill up trolleys then load into the back of a yellow transit van thousands of the tins and packets of custard powder before making their escape.
The Prime Minister tried to restore calm to the nation late this afternoon by assuring the public Britain has sufficient stocks of custard to see us through the year. Speaking from the steps of number 10 he said there was enough custard to see Britain through the year provided we make the custard more watery to pour over our desserts of apple pie or rhubarb crumble.
Coming on the very day when a hose pipe ban was brought in across Britain water companies responded furiously by describing the Prime Minister's advice as irresponsible and warning they could not guarantee being able to provide their customers with the amount of water required to make custard sufficiently watery this year.
