A TEENAGER who stole his father’s credit card, flew to Rome and spent £12,000 on designer goods and smart hotels has blamed his parents for not taking him to the January sales.

Tom Smith, 17, took his father’s NatWest Mastercard and Switch and went on a four-day spree because he was fed up with the weather and wanted a Prada coat.

When he arrived in Italy he got “a bit carried away”, spending £7,130 on clothes and accessories from Versace, Gucci, Prada and Dolce & Gabbana by forging his father’s signature.

He insisted that it was all the fault of his parents, who stripped him of his allowance when he left his private school and decided to take a gap year before sitting his A levels. According to Tom, his father, John, has refused to pay the credit card bill and his mother is upset, but “likes my clothes”.

Among his purchases was a Vuitton bag, which cost £544, two Versace belts for £544, Versace silk slacks for £380 and three pairs of Dolce & Gabbana jeans, worth £870.

He bought a Louis Vuitton suitcase, costing £1,632, but he failed to find the Prada coat he had set out for, because they did not have the style he wanted. He compromised with a Versace coat for £544.

He also bought a present for his sister, Rebecca, but did not get either of his parents a souvenir because he thought it would be “cheeky” to get them something with their own money.

On returning to England, he decided against going straight home. Instead he ordered a limousine to drive him to London to pick up three friends before heading to Brighton. The foursome then checked into the £250-a-night Thistle Hotel.

The next day Tom bought a £860 Sony video camera to capture his trip before heading home in the limousine, accompanied by his friends and 11 bottles of champagne. By then he had hit the card’s £12,000 credit limit, having spent £1,983 on the two-day limousine hire.

He returned to the family’s £1 million home in Victoria Park, Hackney, to face his parents on January 30, having left London on January 25.

Tom’s father, a £100,000-a-year investment banker, is believed to have called his son “a little s**t” when he arrived home.

Yesterday Tom, who was still wearing his Dolce & Gabbana green and orange striped blazer, refused to apologise. Speaking outside his parents’ house he said: “I am not sorry that I spent the money because I have lots of lovely things.

“I am not spoilt. I have been given practically everything but it was all taken away from me when I left college. My dad has not taken me shopping for ages and there were all these lovely sales on.

“I have wanted some new clothes for a while. I was in a pub with friends in Greenwich. I was totally fed up with the weather and decided I needed a holiday.”

He said he had not discussed repayment with his father: “I don’t think he is talking to me at the moment. He just grunts into the newspaper when I try to talk to him.

“My mother is a bit upset by the whole thing, but she said to me, ‘I am your mother and I will always love you’. And she likes my clothes.”

He claimed that he had managed to persuade Mastercard to undo the block on the card, imposed after his father reported it stolen on January 26. A spokesman for NatWest said last night that this should have been impossible.

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