A shoplifter who nabbed pricey audio equipment has been banned from John Lewis.

Factory worker Hendrick Delagrange, 39, stole more than £550-worth of headphones from the Oxford Westgate branch of the department store chain on October 22 last year.

Barely a fortnight later he was caught trying to take a set of speakers worth more than £600 from the John Lewis store in Solihull.

He was charged with the thefts after he was stopped trying to walk out of a Tesco supermarket with £132 of perfume on January 15.

Appearing before Oxford Magistrates’ Court via video link from Milton Keynes police station, Delagrange, of West Street, Banbury, pleaded guilty to three counts of theft. He had one previous conviction dating back more than a decade.

Angela Porter, mitigating, said her client had a job but had stolen the items to sell on as the salary from his factory job wasn’t enough to pay for his drug habit.

The court was told that he’d been taken from Banbury police station to Milton Keynes as he was showing coronavirus symptoms and there was no healthcare professional in the Oxfordshire station.

He appeared over the video link only haphazardly wearing a surgical mask. A uniformed police constable in the video link room with him had a blue surgical mask covering his nose and mouth, but was wearing no other PPE.

The magistrates bailed him to return to court for sentencing on February 16. His bail conditions ban him from going to any John Lewis store and he must live at his home address in West Street, Banbury.