ANOTHER day, another high-profile “home invasion” in a Britain that feels increasingly unsafe.
Normally, I tend to avoid Americanisms, but “burglary” conjures up an image of a lone thief creeping in and out with a swag bag and we’re waaaaaay past that.
The latest victim to make headlines is footballer Raheem Sterling, who flew home from the World Cup after learning his family home in Oxshott, Surrey, had been targeted by a gang and £300,000 worth of watches and jewellery stolen.
His fiancée Paige, mother to two of his children, returned home on Saturday night to find the place ransacked and she and Raheem reportedly feel thankful for the small mercy that she wasn’t home when it happened.
Others weren’t so lucky. In January, Man Utd star Tahith Chong, now on loan to Birmingham City, was asleep in bed with his girlfriend Rianna Taylor when three men in balaclavas burst in and threatened to “chop them up”.
They yanked the Dutch footballer out of bed by his ankles, brandishing knives and demanding to know where valuables were kept.
Rianna, 24, said: “The blokes were terrifying . . . I have not had a proper night’s sleep since and can’t sleep with the lights off.
“I have been diagnosed with PTSD.”
Unsurprising after such a frightening violation.
Our homes are our sanctuaries, our supposedly safe space. And when someone invades it, they take our peace of mind too.
Chong’s ex-teammate Paul Pogba’s house was also raided while his two children were being looked after by their nanny.
“My wife and I rushed home not knowing if our children were safe and unharmed,” he says.
“The burglars were in our home for less than five minutes but in that time they took from us something more valuable than anything we had in our home . . . our sense of safety and security.”
Exactly. A sentiment that will be all too familiar to Olympic cyclist Mark Cavendish, who was held at knifepoint last December in front of his “extremely distressed” young children who “feared for their lives” and are “struggling with the after-affects”.
When a gang doesn’t give a damn about destroying the mental wellbeing of young children, you know you’re dealing with a whole new level of criminal.
A police officer told me that many gangs now wilfully carry out raids when a family is home because, firstly, there’s a high chance the alarm won’t be on if the parents are still up watching TV and, secondly, they know you won’t resist if your kids are in the house.
These high-profile examples are perhaps a symptom of a wider malaise that affects all of us — the lack of visible policing as a deterrent.
A quick glance at the neighbourhood app Next Door will tell you that, all over the country, people feel abandoned by the “law and order” supposed to protect them.
The crimes might be a lot smaller — street muggings, stolen cars, parcels nicked off your doorstep — but the feeling that criminals no longer fear the police or “justice” and “you’re on your own” is huge.
This week it was revealed that more than 100 reports of violent crime per day are being “screened out” by police officers across 17 forces. More than half a million reports were dropped overall last year following an initial assessment.
This isn’t a pop at frontline police. They do a tough job and took a record 500,000 days off because of mental ill health in 2021.
Other statistics show they spend just 20 per cent of their time tackling crime and the rest dealing with non-crime related incidents such as vulnerable people abandoned by cash-strapped social care services.
Little wonder that record numbers of police officers are leaving. They feel as abandoned as we do by those with the power to give police officers the time, the manpower and the authority to deal with the criminals blighting people’s lives.
And until they do, it’s anarchy out there.
QUEEN OF TACT IS GONE
FRANK SKINNER had an awkward encounter backstage with the Countess of Wessex following his rendition of Three Lions at last week’s Royal Variety Performance.
“She comes up and says, ‘Don’t give up your day job’,” says Frank, who adds that she followed it up with: “I could tell it’s not what you do. You’re not used to a live crowd.”
He pointed out that he was very much used to live crowds. “She looked at me like, ‘You’re not supposed to be arguing, you’re supposed to just nod’,” he continued.
It’s not quite up there with the persistent rudeness of royal courtier Lady Susan Hussey, but one wonders whether our late Queen’s diplomacy skills died with her.
If Her Majesty had asked Ngozi Fulani, “Have you come far?” and got the reply “Hackney,” that would have been the end of the matter.
And even if Frank Skinner had sounded like widely mocked American singer Florence Foster Jenkins, the Queen would have avoided offence with the observation “intriguing” before swiftly moving on.
Bonas to keeping mum
PRINCE HARRY’S former girlfriend Cressida Bonas has given birth to her first child, name and sex undisclosed.
We only know she’s become a mum as she was photographed pushing a pram with husband Harry Wentworth-Stanley.
The birth comes nine months after Chelsy Davy another of Harry’s exes, had her first child with husband Sam Cutmore-Scott – a pregnancy they kept secret by moving from high-profile Chelsea to a quieter part of London.
Both women reportedly parted company with the Prince because they didn’t want to live their lives in the goldfish bowl of fame.
But Harry went on to meet and marry Meghan Markle, a woman who clearly shares his view that, rather than keep your head down and lead a relatively normal life, you can constantly demand greater privacy while at the same time invading it yourself whenever the price is right.
They are the perfect match.
WE CAN STAY AS FRIENS
REGULAR readers of the column will be familiar with “The Bloke” – in fact I wrote about him only last week.
We’ve been together for 23 years but, full disclosure, a year ago we quietly agreed to separate.
We are still living in the same house and will share this Christmas together with the family, but in the New Year we plan to sell up and find our own places.
Not quite John Alderton and Hannah Gordon in the Seventies sitcom My Wife Next Door, but hopefully near enough that we can keep our strong friendship going.
And I’ll still be writing about him in the column every so often – he can’t escape that easily.
Mone's career lift-up
“BARONESS Bra” Michelle Mone was always a rather curious appointment to the House of Lords.
It seemed as if then PM David Cameron was in full panic mode about the lack of women and added her as an afterthought, a bit like that Castlemaine XXXX ad when a pick-up truck is loaded with beers and they add two bottles of sherry as “something for the ladies”.
For those unfamiliar with the punchline, the truck collapses and an Aussie rancher observes wryly: “Looks like we’ve overdone it on the sherry.”
Well, looks like they may also have overdone it by handing a peership to a woman described as “extraordinarily aggressive” by Matt Hancock when lobbying him to support a PPE contract for a company she was helping.
Her possible financial connection to the firm is now under investigation, but aside from that, one can only marvel at the original decision to appoint a “business tsar” whose achievements appear to have been as cosmetically uplifted as the Ultimo bra she once fronted and has now gone, er, bust.
WEE'RE A TEAM
THE first ever saliva-based pregnancy test is about to hit the shops.
The makers say it will enable couples to do the test together “for the first time” and one woman described it as a “joy” to be able to do the test with her partner present.
If you know them well enough to potentially get pregnant, why the coyness over them being there when you wee?