“HIS make-up was very well done, with blackened eyebrows and very long eyelashes,” said the jeweller working in the Smycka store in Farsta, southern Stockholm. He’d been handcuffed and threatend with a pistol by a thief. “I figured that he must have had help from a woman because the make up was so well done.”

As what police call “a man, woman, or possibly a transvestite” raided the shop for six minutes an accomplice dressed as Santa Claus waited outside, performing what the worker called “cheap tricks” for other shoppers.

“He distracted us so we’d look the other way to a different store, ” said an eyewitness. “He was behaving really strangely.”

That’s Santa for you…