Channel 4’s George Clarke robbed at knifepoint for his watch in Oxford Circus
https://www.standard.co.uk/showbiz/george-clarke-robbed-knifepoint-watch-oxford-circus-london-b1200495.html
Posted by tylerthe-theatre
Channel 4’s George Clarke robbed at knifepoint for his watch in Oxford Circus
https://www.standard.co.uk/showbiz/george-clarke-robbed-knifepoint-watch-oxford-circus-london-b1200495.html
Posted by tylerthe-theatre
29 Comments
Farage said this a while ago in one of the debates and got laughed at for it, but I’ve found it to be true with the people I know: if they have two brain cells, most well-off people are simply no longer wearing their nice watches in London anymore.
It’s now just a norm amongst London circles, a shared understanding that you simply *will* be inevitably mugged if you have a nice watch. There was even an article this year about wealthy Indians raising the alarm and saying London was worse than Delhi – https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/07/indias-wealthy-fear-london-is-worse-than-delhi-for-muggings
It’s a shame, but I hope this doesn’t get the amount of attention I’m sure it will, happens to so many people and phone snatching but because they are not famous no one will pay attention
Let’s be honest you should be able to walk around wearing what you want without fear of it being stolen. Same with open shop lifting we’ve almost become accepting of crime it’s quite scary.
I have a nice watch left to me by a relative. It’s beautiful and worth quite a lot now. There is no way I would ever wear it out in London (I live in Dalston). It’s just not worth the anxiety let alone if something were to happen. I can’t see how or why it’s going to get any better tbh.
Clearly they were asking for it, dirty timekeepers walking around openly, with a watch. Serves them right.
Not one mention of the watch brand or value, journalism in this country is at an all time low.
An unfortunate consequence of living in a society that pushes the mindset that having money and expensive possessions is what is required to be happy and fulfilled whilst maintaining a structure in which everyone is not able to achieve that through legitimate means. Something like that anyway.
And before anyone blames immigrants or some other contemporary gripe that we are told is the issue – we’ve been doing this for a long time, it’s just easier to mug someone for their watch now than to do a blag on a post office.
Well the London Mayor says it all part of living in a big city so??
The way i look at it is would i walk around with several 1000s of £ around my neck? What might possibly happen? I’d be a target for sure. It would be great to be in a society where personal theft was unheard of, punishment extreme, chances of getting caught almost certain. But thats not here, nor has it ever been. I think it only fair that if someone wealthy wants to display oppulance they can do so, but it puts an extra burden on the police. They wont catch anyone, even with cctv footage and their role is to hand out crime reference numbers
The guy who is head of corporate security where I work came on an all-staff call the other day and basically said, if you’re coming to the London office don’t wear or carry expensive stuff or walk round with your phone out because it probably will get taken if you keep doing it. Oh and watch out for people hanging round on the street outside the door after dark.
Tbh I work in Birmingham and it is getting just as bad especially at night, we’ve had a few incidents. Mostly car crime.
Honestly, I’m in my 40’s and have lived in London my whole life. I’m not convinced the number of thieves has changed very much, but the nature of crime changes.
I grew up in a shit area where thieves went from corner shop to off licence to bookie to bank. Or from car stereo to car to houses. The reality now is, if you’re a thief, taking things straight from a person is the best risk to reward you’re going to get these days.
I wonder if this sub will ever have anything positive on it?
I don’t even think people are being characteristically gloomy. I just think our country, culture, social fabric and sense of community has been all but eroded.
Always get a nice watch engraved, makes it much less valuable and harder to sale on the black market. It’s a small win against a big loss and larger society problem.
Sad that London is like this now.
I grew up here. Nowadays I feel like I’m taking the same precautions with my stuff that I do in developing nations.
It’s only people who live in London who think London is a good place to live.
No wonder this country has the highest millionaire exits in the world. If I was well off I’d fuck off too!
Let’s hope he can visit the thief in a few years time and see what he’s done with it
If London didn’t have insane crime I would definitely buy an iPhone and probably an Apple watch too, but instead I have a cheap android phone and no watch at all, because there’s a good chance of getting mugged
This is not normal, we have been failed by multiple political parties who have overseen the failed experiment of soft sentencing, it obviously doesn’t fucking work, criminals operate with impunity. This sort of crime just doesn’t happen in Dubai or Singapore because the authorities would come down on the criminal like a tonne of bricks
When people think someone deserves to be robbed is when society lost. Nobody deserves to be robbed if you agree with the showmanship or not.
Not trying to pin the blame on Clarke here, but I’ve always found the idea of dressing flash to be an open invite for thieves. Why advertise, especially in cities.
never understood the watch obsession.
They don’t even do anything.
The sole purpose of a flashy watch in 2024 is to signal affluence to people in your perimeter.
If you’re not affluent enough to also exert control over the types of people in your perimeter, you’re risking being robbed.
London is a total mess for crime. Essentially most crimes are legal now. 98% of phone thefts unsolved. Only time things were looking okayish was when we locked up large amounts of looters. Crime rate went down quite significantly.
Simple answer: jail 5x as many people for 5x longer and instead of focusing on wishy washy nonsense like trying to make jail comfortable, focus entirely on lowering the cost of jailing, including penal colonies abroad.
We need many more police units dedicated to catching muggers and robbers in London, with 10 year minimum sentences for mugging/robbery.
And finally the pièce de resistance: broken windows policing including jail for shoplifting.
We can’t suffer a crime wave if all the criminals are locked up. Only a small amount of humans lack the moral rectitude to turn to crime when they feel like it. We should stop being soft on crime. We used to execute people simply for smuggling fgs.
You can walk around anywhere, literally *anywhere* in the UK without fear of violent crime.
Except for the capital. Even then it’s only in very small, very specific areas where it’s actually dangerous for anyone who isn’t part of the underlying criminal/gang culture that’s specific to that area.
The UK is broken, people are desperately poor and the fact that one middle class journo from Channel 4 got mugged in 2024 is not a sign of social and urban decay, those things have been happening for decades.
If anything it’s a sign of restraint.
It’s wild how many comments here are, essentially, “he was asking for it dressing like that”.
Street robbery should not be an accepted part of civilised life. It’s not 1880. There needs to be a serious police effort to catch the people responsible (especially the organisers) and a serious punishment that acts as a genuine deterrent e.g. fines of 500 times the value.
And they’re going to knight Sadiq Khan…. lol. What a travesty.
I don’t recognise Glasgow as having big issues like this. Kids smoking weed, lots of drunk people at chucking out time, but I’ve never felt unsafe or in danger. Little personal theft AFAIK. Except maybe for chained up bikes, that can be an issue!
I don’t wear watches and maintain the appearance of a borderline hobo which makes me look like someone not worth mugging. Recommended.
Unfortunately we live in such a perverse country that he would have the book thrown at him if he knocked the suspect out.
Even if he legally could defend his property the media would make the suspect out to be the victim.