Jamie Laing has described how police with sniffer dogs searched his and Sophie Habboo's home in the middle of the night after a reported break-in on their street. The former Made in Chelsea star said the incident left him "terrified", although it turned out to be a false alarm.
Midnight Disturbance
Sophie explained that she had been tired and went to bed at about 9pm on the night in question. She was "out cold" by the time Jamie came to bed, but something later woke them both up. Unsure what had disturbed her, Sophie went to the toilet and then back to bed.
At around midnight, they heard the doorbell. Jamie called out of the window and discovered a group of police officers who needed access to their home, searching for someone believed to have broken into a nearby property.
High-Profile Neighbour
Jamie said: "I'm not going to say who it is, but we have a high-profile person living in the street. Anyway, okay, living on our street. So we were like, 'Okay, this is mega'. I was terrified. It was pretty scary."
Much to Sophie's exasperation, Jamie mentioned that he had appeared in the Channel 4 crime documentary Famous and Fighting Crime. He joked that when he greeted the officers at the door, they "straightened up", while he said: "At ease, boys."
Sniffer Dogs Called In
Sophie quipped about the officers' reaction to seeing Jamie in his pyjamas. She continued the story: "We were both there like, 'What's going on?' They looked in our garden. They jumped over the gate. They were like, 'Don't worry about it, mate'. They go out. No one's there."
Jamie cut in: "It was absolutely terrifying", to which Sophie claimed she "wasn't scared at all." He continued: "I was s******g myself. I was terrified. These guys came into the house. It's like policemen in your house."
Once the police decided nobody was there, they started to leave, but remembering they had not checked the couple's basement, Jamie went after them and asked them to return. The police then told them they were bringing in sniffer dogs; they returned shortly with an Alsatian, which raced through the home searching.
False Alarm
Jamie said an alarm had been going off in another home, while Sophie theorised that the incident was linked to the unnamed "high-profile" person. She claimed it was not "normal" for so many police officers to attend to "one little alarm".
The dog clearly left an impression on Jamie. He continued: "Good luck taking that dog on. If that chased after you, I would play dead on the ground. It was so ready to take anyone down that its owner was, like, holding it back. It was enormous."
However, the late-night disturbance turned out to be a "false alarm", and no one was found. It was "absolutely exhilarating", Jamie added. As for the couple's son, Ziggy, he "slept through it all".
