A grieving son has issued an appeal to find a diary with entries about his dad’s death after it was stolen.

Les Snowdon had his bag snatched by a scooter thief as he was riding a Lime bike through Harringay after visiting family on September 14.

Along with his laptop, clothes and a newly-bought pair of headphones, the bag contained Mr Snowdon’s diary - a Moleskine-style notepad.

Mr Snowdon, head of sport at The Times and Sunday Times, said that in it he had written of his father’s death earlier this year, including of his own feelings of grief and the advice he had received.

While he is sanguine about a pair of "mint" headphones and a brand new Scotland rugby top in the bag, it is the diary he wants to find - and which he thinks the thief will simply discard.

Mr Snowdon said: “It’s a year in which I’ve become a grandfather and lost my Dad so it had some quite significant entries in it – thoughts, musing and dealing with grief, as well as advice I’d been given to try and work through it.”

The journalist had been riding towards Hackney after visiting his family - including his recently-born grandson - in Haringey when his bag was stolen as he turned into Hermitage Road from Green Lanes.

He said: “One of the scooters got close to me and I looked him in the eye and naively thought this fella is a delivery bloke, he’s probably going to ask me for directions and how embarrassing because I haven’t a clue where anywhere is in this part of London.

“I looked from his eyes to his hands and saw that he was very niftily driving the scooter and lifting my bag from the green bucket on the front.

“He got that and took off with it. I tried to give chase but I was never going to catch him.”

Mr Snowdon reported the theft to the police but was told there was no chance of solving the crime.

He said he only realised his diary was missing after he went to begin transcribing the entries.

He added that he imagined the diary was “worthless” to anybody else so might have been discarded by the thief.

Mr Snowdon described it as a black moleskine-style book and hoped that if someone had found it they might be wondering how to return it to “its scrawly-handwriting owner”.

The Metropolitan Police have been contacted about the incident.