Chat show host Fern Britton yesterday said she feared her son might join a gang for protection after he was mugged.
Fern, 51, said: "I don't have experience of a child in a gang yet, I might do, but I hope to God I don't."
This Morning presenter Fern, who has 14-year-old twins Jack and Harry, then went on to tell viewers how muggers confronted one of them and his friend in the street.
The pals had walked past four men in a car last week when one got out and asked to borrow her son's mobile.
He refused and was then told to empty his pockets. Fern said: "My son and his friend felt powerless.
"They emptied their pockets and gave him everything they had." The man then drove off.
She added: "My son and his friend ran round to his friend's parents' house, because fortunately they lived nearby. But it was that powerlessness." Fern, hosting a TV debate on an advice booklet for parents called Gangs: You and Your Child, said: "He couldn't remember the colour of the car, what the man looked like, the number plate, and I could see that a child who's been in that situation, for protection, would join a gang."
Fern did not reveal which son was mugged and where it was. Her twins are from her first marriage to TV executive Clive Jones.
Fern now lives with second husband, chef Phil Vickery in Holmer Green, Bucks.
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Lyn Costello, of Mothers Against Murder, who helped write the book let launched yesterday by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, said she knew of a girl of 15 who joined the gang who mugged her.
She said the teenager was bright, doing well at school and never in trouble. But she was mugged outside her school and felt powerless.
The girl thought no one had done enough to help her so she befriended the mugger and then signed up with the gang. The Mirror's anti-knife campaign aims to help break the power of gangs who can instill fear through carrying weapons.
Mirror's critical demands
1 Give our police tools to catch knife thugs
2 Launch amnesty to bring in the blades
3 Nurses to report treating stab victims
4 Teach all pupils that knives solve nothing
5 Texts and internet will help win battle
