Forget the weddings in Big Fat Gypsy Weddings – ever since Channel 4 delved further into the travellers’ community by showing the spectacle of the childhood confirmation, I’ve been in a state of shock and awe.

It’s the disco aftermath. Throes of florescent, scantily clad children popping their bodies to Shakira and “dutty wining” in a way that would put the most agile veterans of a Jamaican dance hall to shame – yet all in the name of the good Lord.

I’m not judging, I’m jealous.

Despite this fleshy parade, the “travelling way” prides itself on a rigid morality – a set of strict guidelines that are followed fastidiously. This makes me question our fair society and how we define good values in our tricksy world.

It used to be a question of religion, something that I personally abandoned aged eight, after I was made to colour in the same pamphlet at Sunday School at least 40 times. I’m pretty sure that if you stuck my head in holy water, I’d hiss and melt.

With religion you know what you’re getting – either an eternity of fire and brimstone with Achy Breaky Heart on repeat or, if you’re lucky, swanning about in heaven, dining on scallops and breaststroking up a river of Chambord.

However, without those stone-etched commandments to answer to, the guidelines of what defines a good and bad person become a little hazy.

Pondering my column this week, I stumbled around a supermarket in a post-drunken haze attempting to purchase some kind of delicious baked good. After mindlessly dribbling into my phone for a fair while, I sashayed out of there, bleary-eyed and unaware that said baked good was absentmindedly slung over my arm.

I was swiftly rebuked – a strong grab to my arm, a parading in front of onlookers and a stern talking to from the tiny balding general manager was enough to not only remove my dignity, but make me feel like I was going to get my hand removed. I actually gave a cry of, “Take the almond croissant – I’m a good person.”

In an attempt to massage my accidentally bruised conscience, I thought of all the things I normally do that mark me as a moral human being. An occasional muffin to Big Issue seller, check. Giving up seats to old crones, check. Willing sharing food stuffs with my impoverished flat mates, check.

Recently, the moral worth of Londoners was put to the test when a cash machine kindly spurted out wads of free money. A Guardian poll suggested that 78 per cent of people would “take the money and run”. I too would go with this option, providing I wasn’t being watched. Then probably go inside and fill my bag with their free pens too.

Morals seem to inhabit a grey area – maybe when it comes to faceless corporations, the public are less willing to uphold their values. I’m still riddled with remorse from pinching a Sherbet Fountain from Pat and Roy’s village shop, aged four.

Now that I’ve had my brush with crime, I shan’t be considering it as a viable career move, even though I enjoyed Ronnie Barker in 1970s prison-set TV programme Porridge and wouldn’t mind my friends sporting white plasters on their faces in acknowledgement of my inevitable incarceration, à la Nelly.

In the growing void of moral codes, perhaps we should try to follow the mantra: do as you would have done to yourself. Perhaps I shall be be returning those ball-points.

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