Singer Katie Melua has iPhone snatched from her hand while walking home in Notting Hill

 
Katie Melua performing at the Coronation Festival Evening Gala at Buckingham Palace last night
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Singer Katie Melua told today how she was targeted by smartphone muggers in London.

Thieves snatched her iPhone 5 from her hands as she walked from a recording studio in Notting Hill to her home in Holland Park this week.

But Ms Melua, 28, who sang for the Queen at the Coronation Festival gala at Buckingham Palace last night, said she took the incident as a “life lesson” and is even enjoying life without the distraction of her iPhone’s apps.

She said: “It was quite late, but with the weather being so gorgeous I thought a stroll would be great and because I’m not familiar with the back streets, I was holding my phone out in front of me and following the directions on a map home.

“I heard running steps behind me and before I could turn to see who it was, I felt their hands grab mine and wrestle my phone out of my grip.”

The singer, who is married to superbike champion James Toseland, was unhurt. She added: “I was spooked and shocked, but I’m relieved they didn’t take my bag too.”

Her main concern was the security risk of somebody having access to all her contacts, she said, and she immediately had the phone’s contents remotely erased.

Ms Melua, who was attacked in Elgin Crescent at about 10pm on Monday, was shaken up , but is “a very cool customer”, said her manager, Mike Batt. “She was back on track very soon afterwards. She has bounced back and just taken it as a life lesson — something she shouldn’t do now.”

Scotland Yard admits London has the highest number of smartphone thefts in the country. However, Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe told London Assembly members yesterday the number is falling, “not as much as we’d like but it’s going in the right direction”. He said the last three months have seen a 1.7 per cent fall in mobile phone theft.

Mayor Boris Johnson said street robberies, including theft of mobile phones, “shouldn’t be discounted or in any way trivialised or minimised. It is a deeply distressing and infuriating thing, obviously, when people experience this kind of crime.”

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: “The victim was approached in Elgin Crescent from behind by a male who snatched her phone. She reported seeing another male on the other side of the road, and both then ran from the scene in the direction of Ladbroke Grove.

“The suspects are white males, believed aged in their mid-teens. There have been no arrests.”

In recent months, iPhone mugging victims have included Annette Mason, the wife of Pink Floyd band member Nick Mason, who had her phone snatched as she walked her dogs on Hampstead Heath.

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