Why so many reality stars can't resist a jailbird - as Shaughna Phillips falls pregnant despite boyfriend's 9-year cocaine sentence and Ferne McCann's acid attacker ex strikes up romance with a Love Islander from behind bars

Daily Mail​

28-06-2025

From the bikini-clad starlets of Love Island to the glamorous Essex girls of TOWIE, being a reality star is intrinsically linked with a certain brand of fake tanned, plump-lipped glamour.
That sheen of minor celebrity, however, is rather dampened by the gloomy spectre of prison visiting rooms, occasional phone calls and months if not years of waiting for your man to be released.
And yet, that's path chosen by a number of reality stars who have eschewed a romance with a fellow influencer in favour of a man defined by the number of years left in his sentence, rather than his Instagram followers.
Only this week, Love Island's Shaughna Phillips announced she's expecting her second child with boyfriend Billy Webb, who is serving a nine-year sentence for conspiracy to supply 4.5kg of cocaine worth at least £360,000. The conception occured while he was allowed out on home visits.
It came days after the claim that acid attacker Arthur Collins has struck up a romance from behind bars with Love Island's Amelia Peters, despite being handed a 20-year prison sentence after carrying out a nightclub acid attack in London in 2017, leaving 16 people with serious injuries.
Amelia isn't the first high-profile girlfriend of the jailbird, who was dating TOWIE star Ferne McCann at the time of his horrific attack. While they split up as soon as news of the incident emerged, she was seen visiting him in prison with their baby daughter Sunday.
Even ultra posh Victoria Barker-Harber of Made In Chelsea fame stood by her man, Inigo Philbrick, when he was jailed for high-end art fraud, proving that the lure of a jailbrid transcends postcodes, and perhaps common sense.
Shaughna Phillips
Shaughna, 31 - who featured on series six of Love Island - began dating Billy Webb in 2020 after failing to to find love in the villa.
A couple of years on and the couple announced the happy news that they were expecting their first child together - but disaster struck a few short months later.
With Shaughna more than 30 weeks pregnant with daughter Lucia in January 2023, police stormed her and Billy's home and arrested him on drugs charges.
The Love Islander had been blissfully unaware of Webb's criminal endeavours, with the drug dealer later sentenced for conspiracy to supply 4.5kg of cocaine with a minimum value of £360,000.
Shaungha has however stuck by Billy following his conviction, and just this week the surprising news dropped that Shaughna and her jailbird are expecting their second baby together.
Due to being in a Category D prison, Billy has been allowed home visits for 'a few days' each month - and Shaughna has now revealed how she planned her pregnancy under the circumstances.
Speaking to The Mirror on Thursday, Shaughna said she got pregnant the very first time her ovulation period had coincided with Billy being at home.
'It was the first time that my ovulation window coincided with Billy being home,' Shaughna said.
'I was like, "You know what? Why not? Let's just see" - and literally, the next day, I said to Billy, "I think I'm pregnant".'
She went on to hint that Billy is set for early release and will be here for the birth.
She said: 'I know the date that he's due to be home, but I'm not saying it just because anything could happen - but hopefully he will be fully home before my baby is due.'
The blonde bombshell has been very open with her fans throughout Billy's time in prison, and previously revealed on her podcast how she copes with prison visits with her daughter.
She said: 'It's the most gut-wrenching position to be in.
'I want to just put it out there that you can judge me all you want, but please don't let me know, because I feel like unless you've been in this position you can't really have an opinion on it.
'Because before I was in this position, before I had a baby, if you had asked me would I ever, ever take my child into a prison, the answer would be absolutely not. Anyone that does that is crazy. And then, lo and behold, I'm now in this position.
'I don't want Lucia to think differently of her father. I would never, ever stop him from seeing her, ever.'
Ferne McCann and Amelia Peters
Arthur Collins, then 25, had been out celebrating his girlfriend, TOWIE star Ferne McCann's pregnancy in April 2017 when he got into a row with three men at an East London club.
He proceeded to spray acid across the dancefloor at them three times, with the substance splashing onto innocent bystanders and burning them.
Ferne and Arthur's child, Sunday, was born during the criminal's trial later in 2017, with Collins jailed for 20 years for what he naively called a 'silly little mistake'.
The TOWIE star later split from Arthur after a year-long on-and-off romance, telling him during a visit to Category A HMP Belmarsh: 'This is the last time you will see either of us'.
But some eight years later, Arthur has seemingly somehow managed to win over another reality TV star.
After being moved to HMP Buckley Hall in Rochdale, the jailbird has allegedly been visited by Love Island star Amelia Peters.
A source told The Sun: 'Amelia has made no secret of her relationship with Arthur and has told her friends she's mad about him and thinks he's the one.
'She says she thinks Arthur is a changed man.
'Some of her mates are worried about her getting involved with him but Amelia won't listen.'
Arthur is said to have a phone in prison that he uses to talk to Amelia 'all the time'.
It is illegal to possess a phone in prison. If found guilty, the maximum penalty is a further two years imprisonment and/or a fine.
In 2018, Arthur was jailed for another eight months for using a smuggled mobile phone to call his reality TV star ex-girlfriend Ferne from his cell.
Amelia, 26, hinted at romance last month on Arthur's birthday when she posted a picture of a bouquet of red roses with the letter 'A' above.
She wrote on the Instagram snap: 'Happy birthday to the most handsome pain in the a**e, Love you x.'
A separate source told The Sun that Amelia and Arthur are simply 'family friends'.
MailOnline has contacted HMP Buckley Hall and Amelia for comment.
Lauren Goodger
TOWIE star Lauren, 38, began dating Joey Morrison while he was behind bars almost a decade ago in 2016.
Joey had been jailed for a string of offences including possession of a firearm, kidnapping, blackmail and actual bodily harm.
The couple's tumultuous relationship started when Lauren answered the phone at her friend Charlotte's home - Joey's sister - and struck up a conversation with the convict by chance.
Lauren and Joey went onto enjoy jail calls and dates while he was on day release on weekends, with the TOWIE star gushing about being 'happy' with her jailbird in a number of interviews.
However things between the pair came to a head just 15 months later in 2018 after a furious row inside HMP Highpoint South amid claims he had been messaging other women.
In a later interview with New! Magazine, Goodger admitted she 'lost herself' during the relationship, which her friends said they were 'relieved' to see her out of.
'I think you lose yourself with every relationship,' she said.
'You lose your identity because you're not on your own and you're in a two.
'You're not as strong anymore, especially when you're with someone inside.'
When she appeared on Celebs Go Dating, Lauren admitted that she regretted their time together.
She said: 'The ex was my biggest mistake. With my job, people don't understand that being with someone in jail doesn't look good.
'I wasted two years when I could have been dating. I wish I hadn't waited for him to come out.'
Candidly discussing her relationship with Joey in the first episode of the Channel 4 dating show, Lauren branded the romance the 'biggest mistake of my life'.
Joey was later released in May 2018, with his sister and Lauren's friend Charlotte announcing the news: 'Words can't explain the feeling of my brother home after 9 years... love you always my joey!'
Dani Dyer
Before her days as a WAG with West Ham United star Jarrod Bowen, Dani endured a far more turbulent relationship with con artist Sammy Kimmence.
The former Love Island star and Sammy welcomed their child Santiago together in early 2021 before their relationship came crashing down just months later.
In July 2021, Sammy was put behind bars for three-and-a-half years for scamming two elderly men out of £34,000.
The con artist convinced his victims, aged 81 and 91, that he would invest their money into horse-racing bets, but instead used it to pay off his own debts and fund a lavish lifestyle.
Prosecutors said Kimmence 'groomed' his elderly victims, likening his fraud to 'a fox getting a key to the chicken pen' and said Mr Martin had considered the conman 'a friend right up until he died.'
In April 2021, he made a last-minute change to plead guilty to his crimes and Danni stood by him while he awaited sentencing.
However, the day he appeared in court in July that year she was not by his side.
A day later, it was confirmed that the couple had split up with a source telling MailOnline that Kimmence had 'downplayed' the severity of his crimes to Danni.
The source said: 'He led her to believe he hadn't done anything too serious and that he would get a suspended sentence now she knows the full horror of the crime.
'She is broken. She feels desperately sorry for the two men he scammed and whose lives he ruined.'
'She feels utterly stupid for ever believing him and she is totally overwhelmed.
'The little dream family she thought she had has been smashed apart and she is now trying to work out how best to pick up the pieces.
Dani later opened up on the Sorted with the Dyers podcast about the ordeal.
She said: 'You are never really friends with your ex-boyfriend. It's a little bit different in my situation.
'Obviously, I will always have a relationship with Santi's dad, it's very different when you have children.
'You're tied together by blood and you're always going to have a relationship there. But there's still a line.'
Dani went onto strike up a romance with Jarrod a short time later, and the couple tied the knot just a couple of months ago in a Bridgerton-themed wedding.
They share share two children together, Summer and Star, while Danny also has Santiago with Sammy.
Made in Chelsea star Victoria Baker-Harber met art dealer Inigo Philbrick in 2016 on a friend's yacht in the Mediterranean when he was still with his ex-girlfriend, and they embarked on a romance.
Born in East London, where his artistic parents were living in an abandoned warehouse, Inigo grew up in Manhattan and Connecticut, and in 2005 followed in his father's footsteps by studying art curation at Goldsmiths, University of London.
In 2010, he was taken on as an intern at the prestigious White Cube gallery in London. Gallery founder Jay Jopling — later one of Inigo's victims — was impressed by the bright, sophisticated young man.
In 2013, with Jopling's financial assistance, Inigo opened his own gallery and consultancy in London's Mayfair, specialising in post-war and contemporary art.
A second Inigo Philbrick gallery opened in Miami in 2018. While some clients were wealthy collectors, wanting art to hang on the walls of their homes, he increasingly focused on those known in the art world as 'specullectors', who purchase artworks, or a percentage of them, as an investment.
Inigo would then help these investors re-sell the artworks at a higher price, taking a share of the profits. As is the norm in this line of dealing, the artworks themselves remained in secure storage facilities — meaning clients were completely in the dark when Inigo began selling works to several parties, or over-selling shares in paintings that investors never actually set eyes on.
The piece that brought down his house-of-cards existence was a 2012 painting of Pablo Picasso by Rudolf Stingel, a photo-realist painter from northern Italy.
In 2015, Inigo signed a deal with financial services provider Fine Art Partners (FAP) to sell it to them for £5.8 million as part of an agreement to re-sell the work together at Christie's for a supposedly guaranteed price of £7.5 million.
Such guarantees are a marketing strategy used by major auction houses to lure valuable artworks away from competitors.
Yet he went on to sell the same work twice again — including to an investment firm, Guzzini Properties, for $6 million (£4.9 million).
However, disastrously for Inigo, when the painting was finally auctioned in March 2019, it realised only £5.3 million.
When FAP got in touch with Christie's, the auction house told them that not only had they never signed a guarantee, but the painting had not even been brought to auction by Inigo.
FAP launched a lawsuit in Florida civil court in October 2019, with other clients launching their own legal actions in the U.S. and the UK, where Inigo's assets were frozen by a judge.
But by the time it came for the dealer to appear in court, he had closed his gallery, disconnected his phones and disappeared. He went on the run for six months, with pregnant Victoria by his side, before the FBI tracked him down to Vanuatu in the South Pacific.
When he was sentenced seven years behind bars in May 2022, for masterminding the £80 million art swindle, Victoria vowed to stand by him throughout his prison sentence, calling Inigo the 'love of her life' and insisting, 'There's no way I was going to get up and let him go through whatever s*** was going to come his way on his own.'
As soon as he was released in 2014, the couple swiftly married and Victoria recently announced she is expecting their second child.
Demi Jones
After shooting to fame on series six of Love Island, Demi, 26, struck up a romance with music producer Miami.
But a few months later he was thrown behind bars for an unknown crime, serving 26 months in jail before being released last year.
The couple later split, with Miami telling The Sun: 'I am single. We did split unfortunately,' after she wrote that she was 'finding herself again' in a cryptic Instagram post a month earlier in April 2022.
Months before Miami's release however, rumours began circulating that the couple had rekindled their romance, with Demi commenting a love heart beneath a post announcing the music producer was free.
Speculation arose after a video of Demi on the phone to the music star while he was still behind bars surfaced.
The TV personality has since moved on however, announcing last year that she had struck up a romance with a mystery man.
'I'm seeing someone new, they're not famous,' she said.
'I don't think I could date a famous person ever again.'
Chelsee Healey
After starring as Goldie McQueen in Hollyoaks, Chelsee agreed to feature on Dancing On Ice earlier this year.
The 36-year-old was ultimately the first celebrity to exit the show, telling her Instagram followers in a video afterwards that she was 'dealing with a lot' during her time on the skates.
It turned out that Chelsee had been contending with the possibility of the father of her baby daughter going to prison.
Just a few days after she left the show, Eddie Rainford, 31 - whose identity Chelsee had long tried to conceal - pleaded guilty to supplying Class B drugs during a court appearance.
A source later told The Sun: 'What Chelsee was desperately coping with while on the show was that her partner, the father of her youngest daughter, was in court for drug-dealing and has been sent to prison on remand.'
Eddie was held on remand at Forest Bank Prison in Greater Manchester before being sentenced last week.
A judge handed him 24 months in prison, despite the convict showing remorse for his actions.
Chelsee and Eddie share their baby daughter Cookie together, whom they welcomed in December in 2023.