Columnist and food critic Giles Coren is no stranger to local crime. But the latest burglary of his Kentish Town home has changed his thoughts on safety and security.

Last year, Mr Coren’s car was stolen from outside his house. A few weeks later, his replacement car was targeted in a window smash-and-grab. Then, just last week, burglars climbed in through his kitchen window, stealing a camera and a wallet containing foreign currency.

After three incidents in the last six months and seven burglaries in 17 years, The Times columnist has finally decided to fit his house with high-tech security features.

In his blog on Time Out, Mr Coren wrote: “I am a liberal north London media luvvie and I have truly always considered low-level local crime to be an acceptable tax on living in the world’s greatest city, like the service charge in a restaurant.

“But I’ve lived here 20 years now. I am no longer young and I am not as liberal as I was. So this afternoon I’ve got a security firm from Barnet coming down to give me a quote for new locks and an alarm system, motion-sensitive spotlights, security cameras, barbed wire, a german shepherd and gun turrets front and back.”

A few years earlier, another unwanted guest had entered through Mr Coren’s kitchen window. He chased the trespasser across the garden, cornering him with a spade raised above his head.

“And you know what he did? He pissed himself,” he wrote. “I think he actually thought I was going to kill him. Well, I wasn’t.

‘‘And there was no one around to help me take him in, so I had to let him go.

“I stood there and watched the poor sod cut his hands and face to pieces trying to climb back into the local housing estate through my roses.”

However, at the police station, Mr Coren was unable to pick the suspect out from the files. “With their hollow cheeks and sunken eyes, all crackheads look the same,” he said. “Like a sick monkey painted by Edvard Munch.

“From now on, if the local crackheads want to piss themselves, they can do it in someone else’s garden.”

* Giles Coren’s full Time Out column can be found here.