Dear fellow anglophone residents of our fair commune.

Many of you will have seen, and no doubt been concerned by, reports of the recent wave of mass hysteria apparently triggered by the deep discounting of Nutella chocolate hazelnut spread by the Intermarché supermarket chain.

You will have seen this because it has been reported by the BBC and probably not because you have been to Intermarché yourself.

Not more than once anyway.

You are probably familiar with Nutella, however. It’s that shitty-looking spread in a jar that you may even have eaten. Before you grew out of it.

Available in individual portions

Does this outbreak of lawlessness pose a threat to our peaceful existence here, you will almost certainly be asking yourself.

Allow yourself to be reassured, at least on this front. The nearest Intermarché to here is a good twelve miles away, for one thing. You should also ask yourself how realistic is the prospect of La Petite Superette et Salon de Thé ever discounting anything.

Truth be told, we are rather more worried by a far more sinister current craze, about which there seems to be a conspiracy of silence among the local media.

Look closely at this image, which has been widely reproduced on social media to illustrate the Nutella madness.

Now ask yourself: is that actually Nutella those people are purportedly fighting over?

It certainly isn’t. Those are very clearly boxes of Le Chat laundry detergent. Things are much worse than they seem. Nutella isn’t the real problem. What we have here is the French version of the Tide Pod challenge.

So the next time you see one of the locals foaming at the mouth it might not be simply because somebody’s pi-pi’d his ace in a game of belote.

He’s been on the Soft Rinse.

* ‘spread’. Geddit?