A thief was caught bragging to a friend as he cruised around north London in a stolen electric BMW.

The footage, filmed by the car's dashboard-mounted camera, captures the man's brazen boasts to a pal about the car's power after he took it from the owner's driveway.

Seemingly unaware he is being recorded, the man is heard boasting over the phone in a video which has since been viewed thousands of times online.

He describes the vehicle as a BMW i3, a plug-in electric model worth £26,000, saying: “I have never been in a car like this. This car will leave anything for dust. It is off!”

The man explains how he took the vehicle from the victim’s drive before going on to arrange a pick-up at his flat near North Middlesex Hospital in Edmonton.

He is then heard saying: “I took it out their drive, I’m trying to get it to drive and it won’t drive and then he said take the handbrake off and I pushed it and took the handbrake off. It’s off!”

He goes on to boast about his curved television and bass speakers at his flat before saying he plans to leave the BMW at his home instead of his mum’s.

But the whole cringe-worthy episode was caught in crisp audio by the car’s dash-cam, which has since been posted online by a friend of the car’s owner.

The YouTube video, titled “Car thief on phone doesn’t realise he’s being recorded”, has gone viral since being uploaded several days ago.

In the description field, a comment reads: “My friend's car was stolen (and recovered) recently. There was a dashcam in it, and it yielded these results...”

Barrister Dinah Rose QC claimed on Twitter to be a friend of the car’s owner, and said the vehicle had since been recovered thanks to its GPS tracker.

She confirmed the footage was captured in the early hours of February 2, as the dash-cam time-stamp indicates.

The Metropolitan Police is believed to be investigating.