Madeley girl tells of her shock over phone mugging
The teenage daughter of TV presenters Richard and Judy told today how she was mugged in west London.
Chloe Madeley, 19, had her phone snatched from her ear mid-conversation by a young woman in Portobello Road. The gap - year student was robbed during her lunch break while on work experience at a public relations firm.
Nineteen-year-old Chloe, who was mugged of her mobile phone while she walked in Notting Hill
Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan learnt of the incident near Ladbroke Grove Tube station shortly before their Channel 4 chat show went on air yesterday afternoon.
Viewers saw Madeley expressing his anger when he shook his fist at the camera. Miss Madeley, speaking from the family's home in Hampstead, said: "I was walking along talking on my phone when a girl ran up behind me and grabbed it then ran off. It all happened so fast.
I am fine now, I was just a bit shocked."
The show's producers defended Madeley's emotional outburst saying he "wanted to make his feelings known".
Madeley, 50, told the Standard: "She was stupid to walk out on the street with her phone on display.
"The one thing everyone has told her is not to walk along a street in central London displaying your phone.
"To be honest this is NFL: normal for London."
A father's rage: Madeley raises his fist at the camera to indicate what he would do to the thug who mugged his daughter
Madeley added that his daughter was angry but had not been hurt.
"The thief pulled her hair but if you grab a phone that is welded to someone's ear then that is going to happen."
Madeley and Finnigan, who have been married for 20 years, also have a 20-year-old son Jack. Finnigan, 58, has 29-year-old twin sons from her first marriage.
The robbery happened at about 2pm yesterday and police are studying CCTV footage to try to identify the mugger.
A colleague at the PR company where Miss Madeley is working said there had been a recent spate of attacks: "It's a relatively common occurrence and we hear about it a lot.
"We were warned only recently that you are most vulnerable walking along talking on your mobile phone."
In January the Metropolitan police warned that while overall crime was declining, the number of street robberies in the capital was continuing to rise.
The latest annual crime figures show that robbery figures climbed by 5.9 per cent to a total of 46,147 offences — equivalent to 126 muggings every day.
Met Commander Simon Foy warned at the time that an increase in expensive accessories was fuelling crime.
"One of the big drivers behind the robbery rise is that there are constantly new commodities for people to steal and mobile phones are becoming ever more sophisticated. Even if they can be disabled, they are still worth stealing."
