We are experiencing a pencil famine thanks to your stupid adult colouring books

*Slow clap*

Are you one of the millions of adults to have jumped on the colouring book bandwagon? Great work. You’ve ruined it for everyone.

The international crayon industry is at the point of collapse - a direct symptom of the surge in grown-ups buying colouring books as a way to de-stress. The knock-on effects of the 300 per cent rise in sales of the books have included a demand for better quality colours and extra variety, forcing manufacturers to go into overdrive to supply our needs.

“People are now not satisfied with ‘just’ 36 colours and we are noticing a trend in people preferring bigger sets of 72 or even 120 colours for colouring,” Sandra Suppa from Faber-Castell, the world’s biggest wooden pencil maker, told The Independent. “We are also noticing that people are investing in our highest quality artists’ pencils. Currently, we are running more shifts than usual in our factory in Stein, Bavaria in order to satisfy the global needs for artists’ pencils related to the colouring trend for adults.”

What can we all do to stop our children growing up in a world void of colour? To work with the crayons we’ve got. It’s as black and white as that.