How to stop your Pocket being Picked...

No wonder James Freedman’s super-nimble hands are insured for a huge sum — for the fingers he uses to steal wallets are the tools of his trade.

‘You can pinch anything off anyone — apart from their shoes!’ he says.

Now he’s exhibiting his ‘skills’ on stage in a one-man pickpocket show, called Man Of Steal, in which he even takes off someone’s tie without them realising.

For years he’s been giving pickpocket demonstrations to teach people how not to become victims of street crime. He has also advised the Metropolitan Police and taught the ‘art’ to actors — showing the boy who played the Artful Dodger in Roman Polanski’s film Oliver Twist how to pick a pocket or two.

Freedman, 49, describes himself as ‘the only honest pickpocket you will ever meet’. So I ask him to show me how those crooks we all fear go about their surreptitious trade.

 

First, he says, they ‘fan the mark’. The ‘mark’ is the victim. So ‘fanning’ is using your hand with the fingers spread out to feel for valuables, usually using the back of the hand.

‘It’s a light, fluttering motion and, if executed correctly, the victim isn’t aware of it,’ says Freedman.

Next — and this is vitally important — distract your victim: pat them on the shoulder with one hand as you ask the time and use your other hand to lift their wallet. Or just look into their eyes, so their peripheral vision doesn’t see your hand darting into their pocket.

Or — a much more simple ruse — ‘accidentally’ bump into them.

‘A classic trick is to pretend you are helping them. For example, carry a sachet of mayonnaise or ketchup, put a pin in it and squirt it at someone from a distance. Go up to them and start cleaning up their jacket. While you’re doing it, pick their pocket.’

To describe his activities, Freedman uses old-fashioned pickpocket patter, much of which dates back to 18th-century thieves.

‘Poke’ is slang for a wallet. ‘Skinning the poke’ means stealing one, taking out the money and throwing away the empty wallet.

The easiest target is one who has their wallet (or phone) in the most vulnerable place: the back trouser pocket. Freedman uses two fingers in a pincer-like movement to steal it.

His favourite ploy is to strike as the victim walks away from him — because they are less likely to feel a hand in their pocket while they are moving.

Freedman shows how to remove a pair of expensive sunglasses hanging from a jacket breast pocket by flicking them out and catching them with a folded newspaper.

When he does it to me, I don’t feel a thing. Crucially, he ensures he doesn’t ‘tip the bit’ — that is, draw attention to the pickpocketing action. He thought he’d tipped the bit when he stole the pen from my pocket and it made a clicking noise. Needless to say, I didn’t notice.

Not surprisingly, the most difficult target is a watch. I challenge him to remove mine without me noticing. It is tightly held on my wrist with a leather strap. It isn’t just buckled, but it also goes through a tight retaining loop.

Fixing my gaze, Freedman puts his hand lightly on top of my watch, unbuckles it and whisks it away. I don’t feel anything in the entire operation and don’t look down because our eyes are firmly locked. More oddly, I don’t notice the watch’s absence once removed.

‘People have a muscle memory,’ says Freedman. ‘They don’t notice if something’s gone, however heavy it is, whether it’s a handkerchief — or your notebook.’

With that, he hands me back my hefty notebook, which I thought had been securely tucked inside my breast pocket. Somehow, he’d removed it. For all his skill as a pickpocket, Freedman says he has never used it for anything other for entertainment. ‘I never steal.’

However, he admits one exception: he once saw a woman being pickpocketed outside Harrods, decided to pickpocket the pickpocket and gave the purse back to the victim.

Proudly, Freedman says the smartly dressed thief — who realised too late what had happened — went up to him afterwards and said: ‘Nice work.’

Freedman first became interested in pickpocketing as a child when he was mugged. ‘They took my pocket money and beat me up,’ he says.

Not long after, he saw a theatrical pickpocket on TV — and then saw his father being pickpocketed on a trip to Paris. He now uses his skills to expose quite how vulnerable we all are to the growing number of pickpockets on our streets.

Apparently, Prague and Barcelona are the most dangerous places for pickpockets in Europe; London is listed tenth.

As we walk down London’s Oxford Street, he points out some easy prey: a woman sitting on a bench with an open bag next to her and a man with an unzipped pocket, a phone clearly visible inside it.