An Australian TV reporter has told of the terrifying moment she tried to fight off a London robbery gang who made off with a camera after a broadcast in north London.

Laurel Irving told how she and cameraman Jimmy Cannon were approached by masked men on bicycles after recording a piece on the Grenfell fire for Australian morning show Sunrise.

She attempted to fight them off but stopped her fightback fearing one may have been armed with a handgun.

“I was really busy and noted that they were wearing balaclavas, which you would think would be a dead giveaway as to their intentions,” she told radio station 3AW.

“I started talking into the camera and, while that was happening, one of them walked up to Jimmy, our cameraman, and started talking to him.

"All of a sudden Jimmy took the camera off the tripod and that's when I stepped in and said, 'Hey, what's going on here?'”

She said she tried to step in when she saw Cannon handing over the £14,000 device, saying: “I tried to grab the camera and (the cameraman) yelled ‘No, no — he’s got a gun!’”

“So I let it go and they took off.”

Irving, who is European correspondent for Australia’s Channel 7 News, said: “They didn't immediately strike me as suspicious, however, Jimmy said he had his eye on them the whole time and he knew what was about to happen, you couldn't stop it at that point.

“We never saw any weapons but Jimmy was convinced that if he didn't have a gun he would have had a knife.

“The thing that didn't trigger alarm bells for me was that they were dressed in quite up-market active wear.

“They weren't the scuzzy kind of down and outs of the world, they looked more together than that and they were riding mountain bikes.”

Unfortunately for the hapless robbers, the camera was reportedly still running when the incident took place at about 10pm on Monday – with producers in Australia immediately sending the footage to police.

“I don't know how they're going to offload [the camera]," Irving said. "The cops said they got it on CCTV."

In a tweet after the incident, she praised her colleague but said crime rates in London were "crazy".

The Evening Standard has contacted the Metropolitan Police for a statement.

The incident comes amid fears of a spike in violent crime by gangs on mopeds.

Earlier this week, comedian Michael McIntyre was robbed by a gang of hammer-wielding moped thieves while waiting to pick up his children from school in London.

The windows of the 42-year-old's black Range Rover were smashed and he was forced to hand over a watch, believed to be worth £15,000, witnesses said.

Mr McIntyre had been waiting in his vehicle to collect his sons in Golders Green, in the north of the capital, when he was attacked by two men on Monday.

A witness told the Daily Mail: “The guy at the front of the moped started to hit the driver’s window about ten to 15 times and it eventually just cracked.

“He opens the door and gets Michael McIntyre out of the car. Michael fell but he was still trying to put up a fight.

"I just remember one of the bikers trying to get something. I don't know what the guy was trying to get - a watch, a wallet, maybe?"

His wife Kitty McIntyre said the comedian was doing "fine" as she left their house in north-west London with one of the couple's children in a silver Range Rover on Tuesday morning.

In another moped attack, a 24-year-old woman pleaded for mercy before being left critically injured by a mugger in Edgware, north London, on Monday.

New police figures have revealed a five per cent rise in violent crime in the 12 months to the end of April this year. There were 35 youth homicides, up 25 per cent, muggings were up 30 per cent, and knife crime up 18 per cent. Moped muggings rose by 50 per cent to a rate of 60 offences a day.