The television chef Jamie Oliver inspired a former Customs warehouse worker who was the “inside man” on a £3 million Cartier robbery to call the police and confess seven years later, a court was told yesterday.

Tom Baisden, 28, was working at Southend airport in May 2001 when he helped to organise the theft of a consignment of Cartier watches, jewellery, handbags and belts in a bogus robbery.

He was tied up and beaten during the raid and even gave a press conference appealing for help to catch the robbers. Although police suspected he was behind the robbery he was never charged, Basildon Crown Court was told.

But seven years after the robbery, Oliver inspired him to call the police to confess even though they had closed the file on the case. Baisden said: “He used to say, ‘You’re doing the right thing. You can’t run away from things’. He has been a very inspirational person for me, so I trusted his judgment.”

He had met the chef after earning a place in Oliver’s Jamie’s Kitchen television series, which gave troubled youngsters the chance to make a living through cooking.

Baisden, from Thundersley, Essex, admitted theft, conspiracy to steal and perverting the course of justice at a hearing at Chelmsford Crown Court in August last year.

He told police that his cousin, Gary Maughan, a nurse from Hackney, East London, was allegedly involved in the raid, with Joseph Xenofondos, 35, who is unemployed, from Loughton, Essex, and his brother Marios Xenofondos, 39, also unemployed, from Stoke Newington, North London.

Baisden told the court previously that shipments from Cartier came into the airport every week and sometimes contained jewels and goods worth up to £12 million.

He said that when he told his cousin about the consignments, his cousin planned the robbery “whether I liked it or not”. Giving evidence against the three men Baisden said that he helped to load the haul and was then handcuffed, bound, had tape put across his mouth and was beaten up by Joseph Xenofondos.

He told the jury that he thought he was going to die. He said: “I was struggling to breathe, it was very, very scary. It was getting hard to stay conscious. I was hyperventilating.”

He added that after the raid he was scared that he would be murdered to keep him quiet and had no idea that he would be paid for taking part in the robbery, although he received a £100,000 payoff later.

Mr Maughan denies one count of conspiracy to steal and one count of handling stolen goods. The Xenofondos brothers deny charges of conspiracy to steal.

The trial continues.

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