My pal says your conscience should not prevent you, even if it tries to keep you from enjoying it.

He is hardly anarchist material, being the product of a fairly typical inner-city upbringing filled with brothers and sisters. Theirs was a loving family – everything they shoplifted they took straight home to their mum.

Nowdays his only brush with the dark side comes off the back of a lorry.

He gave his wife, The Wicked Witch of the East, a mink stole for Christmas. It was not real mink – although the stole part was entirely accurate.

She wore it yesterday as they shivered during the presentation of an ornate bench to the local bowling green. The previous one had been stolen, so the new one was chained to a tree.

The Wicked Witch asked: “Why is it chained up?”

“To stop it being nicked.”

“What would they want with a tree?”

So my pal has trust issues, and not just in the big city.

He was deer-stalking up north with friends and returned alone to the lodge, buckling under the weight of a year’s supply of venison.

“Where’s Willie?” he was asked.

My pal replied: “Willie’s dead. I think it was a heart attack because he went down like an Italian footballer.”

A shocked silence.

“You don’t mean you just left Willie lying out there on the hill and carried that deer back here instead?”

My pal was unmoved. “I know, it wasn’t an easy call, but I figured nobody would steal Willie.”

He’s poacher-turned-gamekeeper these days, with some shoplifting issues concerning his oldest boy. When he gets on his high horse I remind my pal of his own pilfering exploits when we were kids.

It was a Saturday morning in the Lewis’s store, which occupied the whole block and basement of what is now Debenhams.

My pal was no master criminal in the making. The worst thing he ever did was “borrow” a Flying Scot bike – and even then he kept up the hire purchase payments.

His shopping hauls consisted of a pencil, a Dinky toy, maybe a few sweets. My pal’s 12-year-old fancied a three-piece suite!

Would you be surprised to learn almost 30% of people admit to having shoplifted? I hear you ask, “So low?” That must be why they are called convenience stores.

The five-finger discount is known in the retail industry as “shrinkage” and a few things will have shrunk after a vicar in York advised his flock to try shoplifting if times got too hard.

Anglican priest Tim Jones said it was less harmful than prostitution, burglary or robbery. The needy should target large stores rather than small businesses and take nothing they don’t need. They do say the Lord helps those who help themselves. And if you’re caught plead white-collar crime.

The wealthy Church of England should perhaps invite the needy to dip into their Sunday collections. My pal had a lot on his plate on his annual church visit, on Christmas Eve.

He was complaining someone had got their own back. His bike was missing.

Anyway, he was bemoaning his loss and the sermon on the Ten Commandments only grabbed his interest when it came to Thou Shall Not Steal.

When they reached No 10, and the bit about not coveting your neighbour’s wife, my pal remembered where he had left his bike.