Hunt is on for Chiswick's Broadsheet Bandit

Blue hatted thief stealing newspaper on Sundays


The thief scuttles away with the Sunday Times. Picture: X

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March 31, 2025

An appeal is being made for information about a man who is stealing Sunday newspapers delivered to a home in Chiswick.

Dubbed the ‘Broadsheet Bandit’ or ‘The Sunday Thief’, he has been caught on security cameras wearing a distinctive blue hat. After he lifts the Sunday Times from the doorstep he runs off with an unusually scuttling motion before riding away on a bright red bike.

Members of the WhatsApp group of the residential street off Chiswick High Road have shared details of his activities but he remains unidentified.

According to a report in The Sunday Times, he has struck at the home of former Channel 5 Chief Executive, Dawn Airey. When she spotted him on camera making off, she assumed he had mistakenly taken the paper thinking it was a package but two weeks later he returned and took that Sunday’s edition as well.

He has struck both times early in the morning between 6am and 6:30am. The paper was not taken on a week when it was delivered an hour late and he also ignores other titles with copies of the Sunday Telegraph being left at neighbouring properties.

Dawn Airey told the Sunday Times that she plans to put an Air tag in the paper immediately after it is delivered at its usual time at around 3:45am to be able to track the culprit. She has a black belt in karate, but she assured the paper’s reporter that she just wanted to ask him why he taking such a risk to steal something that costs £4.50..

Her neighbour Jeremy Vine has issued an appeal on X for help in catching the thief saying that the unusual colour of his hat must be a vital clue and that ‘No one owns a hat of that colour’.


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