A THIEF who described himself as an idiot after being caught in the act on closed-circuit television cameras was last night starting a 12-month prison sentence.

Graham Simms was high on drugs and needed money for more when he stole a mobile phone from a reveller in Middlesbrough town centre on January 21.

The young woman was heading home and sat on the pavement near the junction of Corporation Road and Linthorpe Road because she felt unwell, a court heard.

Simms, 35, offered to walk her home and stayed with her for a while, but as she began getting things from her handbag, he snatched her phone and walked off.

The 2am theft was being monitored by camera operators, and they alerted police who arrested Simms nearby within minutes, Teesside Crown Court was told.

Simms confessed when he was interviewed and said he had been an idiot, but when the case reached court he initially denied the charge.

At a later hearing, he pleaded guilty to theft - an offence which put him in breach of a 12-month suspended prison sentence imposed in April last year for burglary.

The court heard that Simms had reached through an open kitchen window, but fled empty-handed when he had second thoughts about stealing from the house.

Yesterday, eight months of the suspended term were activated, and Judge Peter Bowers added four months for what he said was "a particularly mean opportunist theft".

He told Simms, of Leicester House, Eston, near Middlesbrough: "You had had drugs and you took advantage of this young woman who was clearly ill."

Rebecca Brown, mitigating, had earlier urged Judge Bowers to spare Simms prison because Simms was remorseful and was doing well on his suspended sentence order.

"When he was asked why he had committed the offence, his reply was 'I'm an idiot', " Miss Brown told the judge.

"It seems this defendant is someone who is quite decent underneath the offending, but, unfortunately, the drugs tend to be overriding what he is trying to do.

"The reason nothing was taken in the burglary was that he started to commit the offence and realised what he was doing."