CHARLOTTE Baker is 28. She is nine months pregnant. That’s her on the Northants country road between Byfield and Boddington. A tyre on her Porsche 911 has burst. She calls her boyfriend. As she does so two men in a white man approach. They offer to help. They change the tyre. Then one of the men pushes Baker out of the way and steals the car.

Baker is left alone by the roadside. Finally another man arrives and gives her a lift. (No, he does not rob her of her jewels. This is not a balmy August night in Croydon.)

Says Baker:

“The shock is starting to fade but now I am just reeling. It’s absolutely disgusting, these men have no morals. They couldn’t have cared less about leaving me stranded on a quiet road, even when it was obvious I’m just weeks away from giving birth. Afterwards I was trying really hard to keep my feelings down because I didn’t want the stress and shock to send me into premature labour. I was panicking a lot and it was really quite frightening.” “When they first offered to help I thought, great, that’s really useful. There was nothing that alerted me to what was really going on until he got in the car. I was shouting at him ‘what are you doing?’ but it all happened so quickly. It’s shattered my confidence in people. I’m usually a trusting person but I feel like such an idiot for being conned like this. It’s disgraceful.”

It is shocking stuff, indeed. A heavily pregnant woman being allowed to pilot a sports car is just not on…