It’s a steal – Alison Healy on hotels and pilferers

No one wants to be a victim of car theft, but occasionally it can be slightly helpful. That’s easy for me to say, as the vehicle in question was not mine. However, it did contain something belonging to me.

Let me take you back to when I was an impoverished student.

My German boyfriend was planning to visit Ireland at Christmas, and I felt obliged to send back a present to his parents who had been very kind to me when I spent a summer with them.

Because funds were low to non-existent, I decided to rifle the kitchen press and make them a Christmas cake. But when the cake emerged from the oven, I got a sinking feeling that the fruit had sunk. Never mind, an elaborate snow scene would cover up any flaws, I declared confidently.

Stand and deliver — Brian Maye on the ‘gentleman highwayman’ James Maclaine

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On the case – Tim Fanning on Armagh detective James McParland and his battles with the Molly Maguires

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General selection – Frank McNally on national stereotypes, Greek (and table quiz) heroes, and a stamp of greatness

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Blood brothers – Frank McNally on the deaths of two young men, one Irish, in the Korean War

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But icing a Christmas cake was not as easy as expected and the resulting snowscape resembled the chaotic handiwork of an unambitious pre-schooler.

Our German visitor duly arrived by ferry, and at the end of his stay, I loaded the cake into the boot of his car with serious misgivings. But fate was to intervene in a most unexpected way.

He was staying overnight near Dublin before heading to the ferry and when he awoke in the morning, the car was nowhere to be seen. It had been stolen and used by thieves who targeted an Xtravision shop.

Such nefarious activity must be hungry work because, when the car was returned, undamaged, the Christmas cake was gone. The thoughtless thieves left no feedback on the quality of the festive fare so we will never know how the cake turned out. I, for one, can live very happily without that knowledge.

I like to think the cake was either so bad, or so good, that it encouraged at least one thief to abandon his criminal capers and become a master baker instead.

Don’t thieves have eclectic tastes when it comes to stealing? Ask any hotelier. They know that batteries from the remote control and bulbs from the lamps are all grist to the mill of guests looking to get a little extra something from their stay.

The predictable pilferers take towels and glasses, but it takes a special kind of guest to bring a screwdriver and remove the room number from the bedroom door, as happened in the Franklin Hotel in London’s Knightsbridge, according to a report in the Telegraph.

Staff only noticed when a new guest was found wandering around the corridor looking for the missing room number.

Another hotelier told how three men in overalls casually wheeled a grand piano out of the lobby of a Starwood hotel. It was never seen again.

How times have changed. When I worked in a hotel a few decades ago, the most valuable commodity was the humble teaspoon. It had acquired an almost mythical status because light-fingered guests inexplicably could not keep their hands off the piece of cutlery.

The problem became so acute that the dining room staff were allocated a quota of teaspoons and told that they were now responsible for the teaspoons’ whereabouts at all times. Some conscientious waiting staff slept with their bundle of teaspoons under the pillow in case a colleague tried to top up their dwindling supply.

But one greedy guest at the Franklin Hotel didn’t stop at a teaspoon. The regular visitor used his visits to steal an entire dinner service one item at a time, over several months. You’d have to admire the perseverance.

It brings to mind the 1976 Johnny Cash song about the General Motors factory worker who built his Cadillac by sneaking parts out of the factory one piece at a time. It took the fictional factory worker more than 20 years to construct the odd-looking jalopy. Bill Patch was much quicker. The car collector from Oklahoma took the song literally and decided to make a cobbled-together Cadillac as described in the song. The finished piece included the three headlights mentioned in the song – two on the left and one on the right – mismatched seats and one tail fin.

He presented the car to the singer as a gift in 1977. Cash was delighted with the car and used it in a video of the song. A lasting friendship blossomed between the pair, according to the Storytellers’ Hideaway Farm and Museum in Bon Aqua, Tennessee. That’s where you can see the car on display today.

Unlike my German friend, the Cadillac was never stolen for use in an Xtravision robbery. But Cash historians are silent on whether a Christmas cake ever graced the car boot with its presence.