I once dated a girl who had a clothing allowance from her dad (the depressing thing being it was probably more than I’m earning now), and the question was always what was a girl to do when she exceeded her limit. The answer could be only one thing:

Shoplift.

But, you may ask, why should a rich girl ever need to shoplift?

Well one reason would be they tend to get away with it.

Take the lovely Peaches Geldof, daughter of Bob “gimme your feckin’ money” Geldof.

Little Miss Peaches was involved in a little ‘purchasing malfunction’ last week, when a security guard stopped her from leaving an Urban Outfitters with a £285 coat with a security tag on which set the alarm off. Those security tags being the things they remove from your clobber when you pay for it.

Peaches denied the shoplifting suspicion, saying that “I paid for it, obviously, but they left the tag on”.

You’d have thought she’d have come up with something better than that while the security guards held her for ninety minutes before the chauffer-driven Merc popped round to pick her up.

On those mildly embarrassing occasions when the alarms do go off the trick is to produce the receipt to demonstrate your legal possession of the disputed goods.

Although that tends to only work when you’ve actually paid for the stuff.

I was surprised she didn’t try to use the Pete Townsend defence (er, when is this book of yours coming out then, Pete?) to say her actions were all done for ‘research reasons’ for her latest 'documentary'.

Anyone else think Urban Outfitters are always this lenient on suspected shoplifters caught in their store?

Didn't think so...