Detailing the incident that happened on the last day of their stay at a luxury French villa, Celia Walden says she may have missed the burglars by just 15 minutes before she woke up.

• Aug 19, 2020

AceShowbiz - Piers Morgan and his wife's recent family holiday in French could have ended beautifully, had it not because of thieves. The couple's rented luxury villa in Cote d'Azur was burglarized on Thursday, August 14, which happened to be the last day of their holiday.

Writing in The Daily Telegraphy, the British TV host's wife Celia Walden detailed how she found out that they got robbed. She said that she woke up at 6.15 A.M. and noticed the place was a mess. "My handbag was upside-down on the sofa, the box I keep my jewellery in lying empty beside it," she recalled.

French police believe that the thieves may have left 15 minutes earlier before she woke up because of her 6 A.M. alarm. She shared, "They would, they think, have heard the alarm I silenced with the snooze button (best decision of the year), and scarpered."

But that wasn't the worst of it. Celia realized that the thieves may have crept in their bedroom when the couple was asleep, because the handbag found in the sitting room had originally been on a chair in their bedroom.

"Knowing how much worse things could have been had we woken to find intruders in our bedroom put things into perspective when it came to working out what had been taken," she added. "I felt a stomach-plummeting sense of violation at the actions of these depraved and despicable inhuman beings."

While she's grateful that no one was harmed, Celia admitted that losing the jewelry "still stings now, almost a week on." She went on explaining why the stolen pieces meant a lot to her, saying, "I keep telling myself, and they are just things, but they're also memories that have been trampled over."

"The art deco ring my husband had bought me for our fifth wedding anniversary; the vintage Pucci cuff I'd picked up a flea market in LA; those earrings I'd bought from Alfies Antique Market on the Edgware Road when my first book advance came through," she detailed, "every last piece I had with me was gone, none of it of great value, all of it irreplaceable."

The burglars, however, didn't take their laptops and phones, "because they're too easily traceable," according to police.