Cheeky Girl tries Winona Ryder defence

You'll have heard that Gabriela Cheeky Girl was cautioned this week after doing a Madeley and whisking forty quids' worth of stuff from a Sainsbury's. But this wasn't theft - oh no, it was research:

[Mother Cheeky Girl] Margareta Irimia told MailOnline that Gabriela decided to steal from Sainsbury's to research her role as a gangster's wife in a film that unknown Hertfordshire author Jason Cook is trying to get made.

Margareta said: 'Gabriela was worried that it didn't match the Cheeky Girls sweet image and she found it very difficult to think about getting into the role as the wife of a gangster.

'Also she was bored. She decided she wanted a buzz to see if she could become a gangster. She was desperately worried she couldn't do it.'

There's quite a gap between 'researching a film role' and 'bored' - although neither of these options actually turn pinching stuff into a legal activity.

So Gabriela was trying to be a gangster's wife. By shoplifting? That's not a gangster's wife, that's Muriel's mother, surely?

And if Mother Cheeky is to be believed, it was inept shoplifting, too:

She explained: 'She walked out of the store with a one litre bottle of Appletiser. That was all. Instead of going to the till, she just walked out. And the security was running after her. It is like a joke.'

'But she got so stressed about it she was sick in the afternoon. She's never done anything like this before.'

'It's not the girl's character. She just decided that would try her new gangster status.'

But 'possibly acting as a gangster's wife' doesn't make you a gangster. If she'd got a role of the back end of a pantomime cow, would she have felt compelled to crap in a field?

The film itself, by the way, is still at the 'trying to raise funds' stage - so rehearsing might be a little pre-emptive. Although maybe that's why she started with a bottle of Appletiser; by the time the film was starting rolling, she'd probably have graduated to hanging people upside down in meatlockers and shouting at them.

Which would still be more fun than that Touch My Bum song.