I D NICK THINGS AND NOT BAT AN EYELID
Fred’s days as a Woolies ‘Robin Hood’
FREDDIE Flintoff has admitted he used to steal expensive items and give them away “Robin Hood-style” when he worked at Woolworths. The Top Gear star, 43, says he even let someone have a free Sony Playstation to help “the poorer families of the North West”.
Born in Preston, Lancs, Freddie is now worth an estimated £15million.
In his new autobiography The Book of Fred, he writes about his teenage store job, saying: “If I tell anyone born before 1985 I worked in Woolies, they automatically assume I must have stolen from the pick’n’mix [loose sweets]. And I did.
“They were long shifts and I needed the sugar to get me through. But chocolate mice, bon bons and Black Jacks were the least of their worries. I may also have been involved in acquiring a Playstation.
“You see, I found out about a very helpful technical term early on in my career in the retail industry called ‘shrinkage’.
“I think it was designed to take care of damaged goods or faulty items that were returned to the store... a percentage, if you like, that was written into the profit and loss to account for stuff going wrong.
“You could also describe it as a perk for the likes of me and my big brother, Chris.
“Customers would come in who I happened to know and it just so happened the items they were selecting somehow didn’t go through the till accurately. In fact, they didn’t go through at all. It was Christmas after all and the people I was looking out for couldn’t afford a Playstation. In my mind, I was doing a good deed and I stand by it to this day.
“When Woolworths went under, it did occur to me that the scale of the light fingers multiplied across their stores nationwide would probably have played a significant part.
“Back in the early nineties, there were no infrared handguns to clock the items as they were going through.
“Nope, I’m afraid to inform you all those items just mysteriously disappeared through my good pal ‘shrinkage’.”
Freddie also said he would give customers money for their bus fares home.
Detectives
But in the end he had to “draw a line” because the situation started to escalate.
Freddie said: “I knew it was time to stop when a guy I didn’t know came up to me, winked at me and asked for a Playstation. He had no means to pay for it.”
He said security back then was “the least fearful human beings plucked from the dole queue to work as store detectives”.
Freddie first shot to fame as an England cricketer before becoming a TV favourite on A League Of Their Own and later landing his role on the BBC motoring show.
The Ashes hero described his thieving as “Robin Hood-style heroics, looking after the poorer families of the North West”.
The British arm of Woolworths went into administration in 2008.
It stores used to sell everything from the latest pop singles to household goods and even fishing tackle. But they fell out of favour as shoppers turned to big supermarkets and pound shops.
halina.watts@people.co.uk
As Woolies went under, I did think of all those
light fingers