The UK’s leading supermarket chains are forecasting a huge hike in wine trade, during the forthcoming week.

“Based on previous wine sales around this time of year, we have imported three times more than normal to prep for the expected surge,” explained Van White, Asda’s Senior Wine Buyer. “It’s incredible – by 9am the alcohol aisles are teeming with mainly fraught mums frantically filling their trollies.”

Tesco’s head of Beers, Wines and Spirits, Jackie Daniels, said her brand had observed a similar late-October boom: “It’s like feral Supermarket Sweep – I’ve even seen kids swiftly removed from their trolley seats to make room for more wine.”

“But it’s not just late October,” Ginny Tonnick, booze buyer for Morrison’s added. “We are seeing something similar happening in mid-February, around Easter – and at the end of July this year, we completely sold out of wine and had to get some extra security to deal with the angry crowds. Barbara on Cheese in our Tiverton branch said when she was leaving work one evening, a mum even threatened to follow her home and leave her kids with her.”

So, do they suppose the anticipated hike in wine sales is linked with the half-term holiday this week?

Louise, mum to seven-year-old James and five-year-old Cassie, said she could answer that:

“Of course it fucking is.”