Have you ever wondered how many is too many when it comes to taking souvenirs from a hotel? The reason I ask is that at the weekend, I think one of my friends severely overstepped the mark. Yet, when I asked the guys I work with, most of them said ‘You pay for it in your room price anyway’.

Admittedly, I’m not talking about thieving anything as large as a bath robe (or even a bed, which I’ve since discovered once went missing from an American hotel).

The offending articles were just a bunch of miniature pots of jam.

Yes, I know, who’d be desperate enough to nick jam worth about £2 from a hotel you were paying about £200 a night to stay in? The answer: my friends.

Picture the scene. There we were just finishing breakfast when my friend picked up a jar. No sooner had we started discussing how practical they were for a single person, than she had tucked a few into her bag.

Feeling guilty, I then shuffled a few from the stand at my end of the table onto hers to make the theft look less obvious.

Then, almost before I could blink, she’d shovelled those into her handbag as well.

By my reckoning, at that stage the score stood at Hotel nil – Handbag 6.

This then sparked the following conversation between everyone at the table, Friends: “We could have eaten them, so what’s the difference?” Me: “But we didn’t eat them, so it’s stealing.” Friends: “Yes but we could have, so putting them in a bag is just the same as eating them.”

Me: “Given long enough, a human being could eat this chair, does it mean you can put it in your handbag too?”

I’m not sure if you noticed, but I can be a little obnoxious at times.

Wondering what the rules are when it comes to hotel souvenir etiquette, I paid a visit to my one great source of knowledge (the Internet) and tried to find out.

It turns out there aren’t that many. Toiletries, the shoe polisher, paper and pens are all fair game, but if anything else ‘accidentally’ falls into your suitcase, you shouldn’t stress about the price of sending it back, because legally the hotel can add any replacement costs to your bill.

So, as my criminal friends tuck into their ill-gotten gains this week, I know that I, for one, will be sleeping easily, in the knowledge that my home isn’t full of contraband.

Mind you, my easy sleep may also be aided by the fact that every evening I’m able to enjoy a relaxing shower using the luxurious Aqua Di Parma products I nicked from the Ritz Carlton in Bahrain.

You see, a friend told us that if you lock the toiletries away in your room safe each morning, the staff must replace them.

Two years on, and we’re still only half-way through the £500 worth of shower gels and shampoos we brought home with us.