Sadly, the chaps who yesterday helped me fall victim to a classic scam as they liberated me of my iPhone probably don't listen to Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip.

Sitting in Starbucks on Southampton Row, using my laptop and phone trying very hard to get online to meet a deadline (I'll save my BT Openzone nightmare for another post), I was approached first by a homeless man begging for change and in his wake by two guys carrying Oystercard forms which they thrust under my nose, jabbing and pointing and demanding something in a foreign language.

It was quite disconcerting and I first mimed not being able to understand and then, as their yammering became more insistent, I couldn't take it anymore and responded by miming complete disinterest in their 'problem'. They reached a climax in the harassment of stressed out journalist on deadline and then suddenly shut up and left. I locked eyes with one of them through the window as they walked up the street, shooting him a look of what I hoped was 'look, I'm sorry but I really didn't know what to do for you' as he shot me a look of what in retrospect must have been 'well yeah but screw you anyway'. It was only a few minutes later that I realised that yes, those thieving miscreants had lifted my iPhone from my table under cover of Oystercard form.

Bastards.

I was just going to leave it at that, and hotfoot it to the nearest O2 shop to block the phone, but then decided to tell the store manager in the hope that if they knew pickpockets targeted their shop, they could put up a sign to prevent other dopes falling victim to the same sleight of hand. And thus came Minor Outrage #1: the exact same thing had happened in the exact same way to someone just three days ago (she lost an iPhone too). So where was the fucking sign saying, 'Pickpockets are active in this area'? But well, fine, whatever. (My inner critic says: where was your trademark South African wariness when you needed it most?)

Aga, the Eastern European store manager who, with her height and striking looks is the spitting image of a young Angelica Huston, was entirely compassionate and very sympathetic. I'm sure she could sense I was on the verge of tears. She offered me a drink and I was tempted to say, well, I think I'm in shock, so something hot and sweet, please! (I didn't). She filled in a Starbucks incident report, said that she'd be looking at the CCTV footage to see if they could identify the filth in question and gave me three (yes! three!) drinks vouchers and directions to the O2 shop near Holborn station.

To O2, I say: Terrific move to forego training your staff to at the very least feign compassion for someone who's just had their phone nicked. The blasé apathy goes down a lot better, particularly if you then couple that with burying your option to report a stolen phone at the very bottom of your interactive menu and employ call centre staff who maintain a robotic cheeriness all through a conversation about being a victim of theft, and then instruct me to file a crime report without giving me the information they know the police are going to ask for, necessitating several return trips to the shop to make the same phone call a few more times for good measure.

My trip to the police station restored some sense of perspective, surrounded as I was by posters detailing information about the Child Death Helpline and the support offered to victims of rape and sexual assault. These people work at the edge of human experience, I thought, as I watched the desk sergeant, cloaked in the aura of calm that clings to people who regularly find themselves in charge of situations that can turn volatile without warning. He moved in a pool of the sort of vibe that talks people down off ledges, or persuades them to put down the firearm without harming others or themselves.

I watched this man in his late 30s, with silver rimmed glasses and a gently receding hairline, speak with immeasurable patience to a short elderly lady who looked cold and confused. He got up at one point and walked to a nearby coat-stand, searched through the pockets of a fleece. A stream of silver coins passed from his hand to hers; he took a Tube map from a cupboard and gave her a detailed explanation of how to get where she was headed. Then he left his protective glass cubicle, walked her out of the station, offering her his arm down the stairs and directed her onward. I was left with a single thought: this is what it means to be of service.

In the end, it took me four hours to go from the shock of a stolen phone to the relief of knowing that the handset and SIM had been blocked, the crime reported, the insurance claimed on (with a relatively minor excess charge of £25) and a new handset ordered for delivery the next day. There are many, many ways in which it could have been a lot worse, and I'm grateful for the many, many ways in which it wasn't.