Phoebe Burgess revealed earlier this year that she had not been on a date in seven years after the breakdown of her marriage to former NRL star Sam Burgess.

Now, however, the mother of two says she may be ready to return to the dating scene.

Speaking to Daily Mail at the ARN Upfronts on Wednesday, Phoebe admitted she is unsure how to navigate romance while raising her children alone. She is hoping an upcoming episode of her podcast with Below Deck star Hannah Ferrier will offer some guidance.

‘It is so funny. I wish I could tell you something exciting about my dating life, but Phoebe Burgess doesn’t have time,’ she said.

‘On the podcast, I am going to really explore it. We have an episode coming up where I will finally get an answer to my question: “How are you supposed to date when you have two children and are doing it on your own?”‘

The 37-year-old said living under her parents’ roof has also made dating more complicated, while her responsibilities have left her with a much smaller pool of potential partners than she expected.

Phoebe Burgess says living with her parents and two children has put the brakes on her love life

‘I live at home with my parents, so we are definitely not going back to mine. It is a very narrow pool, and not nearly as large as I thought it would be, but I am getting the answers,’ she said.

Phoebe also opened up about the financial pressures she has faced since separating from Sam. She said the only major asset she now owns is her car, as she continues to prioritise the needs of her children, Poppy, nine, and William, seven.

‘We all have to give up certain things in order to focus on what matters most,’ she said.

‘When it comes to balance, I know exactly where my money is going, and that is towards the kids.

‘There is not much left over, but I have a very happy home, and I am grateful for that. I am not going to complain, but the car is the only thing I own now.’

She acknowledged that her circumstances reflect the broader financial challenges facing many Australian families during the cost of living crisis.

‘That is the reality for everyone in Australia at the moment,’ she said.

‘I chose to live with Mum and Dad, and part of that decision comes from necessity. The other part is about giving my children the kind of home I want them to have.

Phoebe has been single since the highly publicised end of her marriage to Sam in 2019

‘When you are raising children on your own, people understand that some things are no longer possible. But I am genuinely excited about what I can give my kids.’

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Phoebe has not publicly entered another relationship since her marriage to Sam ended in 2019.

She now lives with her parents, Mitchell and Sarah Hooke, at their country property near Bowral in the New South Wales Southern Highlands.

In September, she revealed that she had not been on a date for seven years and had not even experienced what she described as a ‘texting flirt’.

Speaking to Stellar magazine, Phoebe said she was shocked when a recently divorced friend quickly began seeing someone new.

The experience forced her to realise just how long she had been away from the dating world.

‘Goodness, seven years without a date,’ she said.

‘Not even a texting flirt! I need someone to explain how all of this works. I have no idea… It is terrifying.’

She lives with her parents, Mitchell and Sarah Hooke, at a country property near Bowral in the NSW Southern Highlands

Although she has previously thought about joining the exclusive celebrity dating app Raya, Phoebe said she could not work out how to represent her current life on a dating profile.

‘My life is not particularly suited to an app. What picture would I use? The children and me at school drop-off? Me at an event?’ she joked.

‘There is no obvious photo. I would question any man who clicked on my profile, to be honest!’

‘Then there is the biography: 37, divorced, and everyone knows the story. Two children. I never get weekends off, so you would have to work around that. And I live at home. There is not much that sounds appealing! I do not think dating apps are really for me.’

Instead, Phoebe joked that she might simply have to wait until romance finds her naturally.

‘Perhaps you just sit back, wait for all the divorces to happen, and catch one as it comes past?’ she said.

Phoebe and Sam separated in October 2019 after four turbulent years of marriage.

They had first split in December 2018, not long after the birth of their son, Billy, before reconciling in April. Six months later, they ended their relationship permanently.

Democratic nominee Scott Colom has made political history by turning Mississippi’s Senate seat blue for the first time in 44 years, delivering a stunning upset over Republicans.

The closely watched midterm contest remained undecided for more than a week after Election Day, with Colom locked in a near tie against Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith.

Mississippi had not elected a new Democratic senator since 1947, when the winner was a staunch segregationist.

Colom, a 43-year-old local prosecutor, benefited from Mississippi’s large Black electorate, frustration over the economy and a series of missteps by Hyde-Smith, who was backed by President Trump as she pursued a second full term.

When the race was called Wednesday evening, Colom led Hyde-Smith by 4,669 votes, a margin of less than half a percentage point. CNN reported that Hyde-Smith had spoken with Colom and conceded. She later released a video statement on social media.

The Associated Press declared Colom the winner Wednesday after local election officials spent several days counting absentee and provisional ballots, known in Mississippi as affidavit ballots.

The contest became an unexpected nail-biter in an election that cost Republicans their Senate majority, with Democrats flipping their eighth seat.

The Magnolia State had gone more than four decades without a Democratic senator. In the run-up to Election Day, however, Democrats grew increasingly confident that Hyde-Smith’s vulnerabilities could open the door to an upset.

Democrat Scott Colom flipped Mississippi’s Senate seat blue for the first time in 44 years

Trump-backed Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith took office in 2018

President Trump carried Mississippi by 23 points in 2024, while Hyde-Smith won her previous race by seven points.

Colom also drew national attention with several of the campaign’s most widely shared advertisements.

After the 67-year-old Hyde-Smith appeared to dismiss concerns about high beef prices by suggesting consumers choose other proteins, Colom released a 30-second ad featuring incredulous voters saying they would “pick another senator instead.”

On election night, Hyde-Smith came close to declaring victory before supporters at a watch party, but stopped short and predicted she would be confirmed as the winner by Wednesday morning.

“This is a much longer night than we thought it would be,” the Republican said, adding: “I assure you I will continue to be your US Senator.”

Colom ultimately proved that prediction wrong.

The Democrat won Mississippi by less than one percentage point, with the AP calling the race more than a week after voters had cast their final ballots.

During the campaign, Colom enlisted prominent surrogates, including Kamala Harris and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in an effort to increase turnout.

Former President Bill Clinton also endorsed Colom and visited the Magnolia State for a midterm rally on October 30.

That appearance appeared to have a greater impact than a rally President Trump held for Hyde-Smith, during which she made a bizarre nine-word appearance.

Although Hyde-Smith faced a tougher-than-expected contest against Colom, the Cook Political Report still rated the Senate race as “likely Republican”

It was Trump’s first visit to Mississippi in seven years. “I’m here because Cindy’s doing great, but I just got to make sure,” he told the crowd. “I can’t take a chance.”

In a late-October interview, Geoff Pender, politics editor at the nonprofit newsroom Mississippi Today, said he was surprised by how competitive the race had become.

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“This was not expected to be a race,” he said. “Hyde-Smith early on probably took it for granted.”

Colom brought in high-profile supporters such as Kamala Harris and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, while Hyde-Smith turned to Trump for a rally aimed at strengthening her reelection campaign.

Pender said Colom “put in the shoe leather” and “worked hard,” but acknowledged that the Democrat still faced “an uphill battle” and would need Democrats to “supercharge and overperform on turnout” to win.

There was a measure of irony in Hyde-Smith being caught off guard by Colom’s challenge.

In 2022, then-President Joe Biden nominated Colom to serve as a US District Court judge in Mississippi’s Northern District.

Mississippi’s senior Republican senator, Roger Wicker, and former Governor Haley Barbour, a former national Republican chairman, supported the nomination.

Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith faced an unexpectedly close race for the Magnolia State’s Senate seat and appeared on stage for less than a minute during Monday night’s event

Hyde-Smith nevertheless blocked Colom’s confirmation, invoking a Senate tradition that allows members to stop a president’s nominees for federal judicial positions in their home states.

Colom said his Senate campaign was never motivated by a desire to retaliate against Hyde-Smith.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer celebrated Colom’s victory in a social media post.

“Blue Mississippi is here. Scott Colom is the only person who could’ve gotten this done. I knew it from the moment I met him.”

Mississippi has the highest proportion of Black voters of any state, and its statewide elections have long been more competitive than those in neighboring Southern states.

Trump won Mississippi by double digits in each of his three presidential campaigns. In 2023, however, Republican Governor Tate Reeves won reelection by only three percentage points.

Throughout 2026, Colom and other Black Democratic leaders and strategists argued that strong Black turnout, dissatisfaction among Republican voters and a modest increase in the party’s traditional share of the white vote could narrow the gap.

The results showed particularly strong turnout in the Mississippi Delta and the state’s majority-Black counties.

Former President Bill Clinton endorsed Colom and visited the Magnolia State for a midterm rally on October 30

Nearly every part of the state also shifted left compared with the 2024 election, when Trump carried Mississippi by almost 23 points.

Then-Governor Phil Bryant first appointed Hyde-Smith, who was serving as state agriculture commissioner, to the Senate in 2018 after Senator Thad Cochran resigned.

She won a special-election runoff that year and a full term in 2020. In both contests, she defeated Democrat Mike Espy, a former US agriculture secretary who had been Mississippi’s first Black congressman since Reconstruction.

As the vote count continued, Colom acknowledged the historic significance of achieving what Espy could not.

But he said he viewed his role less through the lens of his own story than through the experiences of other Mississippians, particularly the state’s youngest residents.

“My job is to do well enough as the next United States senator that the next time some young Black boy or girl has the work ethic, the vision and the values,” he said, “and they want to be United States senator, that nobody says because of anything I’ve done that they shouldn’t get a chance.”

On Wednesday, Beau Lamarre-Condon told the court he did not create email addresses for Jesse Baird or a man Baird was dating.

Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield SC questioned Lamarre-Condon about Grindr accounts during cross-examination.

Lamarre-Condon had previously told the court he went on Grindr and entered the email address of Baird’s new partner to check whether he had an active account.

When Mr Hatfield asked why, Lamarre-Condon said: “Because if he had a Grindr account, it would mean [he and Baird] were not exclusive.”

On Wednesday, Lamarre-Condon said he had not fabricated an email address for Baird’s new partner, but had found it on social media.

Mr Hatfield asked: “If it was one you’d make up, you’d recall?”

Lamarre-Condon replied: “I don’t recall making one up.”

Mr Hatfield then asked: “What about Mr Baird, did you make any fake email addresses or Grindr accounts for him?”

Lamarre-Condon replied: “I didn’t.”

The Crown alleges that Lamarre-Condon created a fake dating profile in Baird’s name.

The court also heard that, on the day he allegedly broke into Baird’s home, Lamarre-Condon texted his best friend, Jodie Parker: “I just need mamma Jodie’s words of wisdom.”

Lamarre-Condon said he often sought Ms Parker’s guidance because she was “spiritual and Christian, and would give me advice about things in general”.

At about 7.30pm on August 17, 2023—the night of the alleged break-in—the court heard Lamarre-Condon asked Ms Parker to speak with him on FaceTime.

Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield SC asked Lamarre-Condon whether he wanted to discuss Jesse Baird with Ms Parker.

Lamarre-Condon said he could not remember, given the conversation had taken place three years earlier.

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The following day, August 18, he sent Ms Parker a screenshot of a text exchange he had with Baird two days earlier, on August 16—the day before the alleged break-in.

In the exchange, Lamarre-Condon wrote to Baird: “Hey, sorry I had to run yesterday. I was running a tad late or I would have loved to chat for longer.

“Let’s do a walk and lunch catch-up after next weekend … then we can have a proper catch-up. Good seeing you though.”

Baird responded at 1.49pm the next day: “It was good to see you too. Glad you had fun in Euro.”

His reply included a plane emoji and a smiling face.

Lamarre-Condon had also sent the exchange to another friend, who described it as “savage”.

The friend interpreted Baird’s messages as indicating that he was not interested in meeting Lamarre-Condon.

The friend said: “OMG. I’m dying. That’s so savage. No, it’s defs savage. If he was keen, he would have jumped on the bandwagon.”

Mr Hatfield had previously suggested that Lamarre-Condon decided to “enter Baird’s property” after receiving the “savage rejection”.

Lamarre-Condon denied that Baird had rejected him and rejected the suggestion that the message prompted him to allegedly break into Baird’s home.

The court heard on Wednesday that Lamarre-Condon sent the same exchange with Baird to Ms Parker on August 18, the day after the alleged break-in.

Mr Hatfield suggested that Lamarre-Condon forwarded the exchange to Ms Parker because he, too, viewed it as a “savage rejection”.

Lamarre-Condon said he had never regarded the message as “savage” and did not consider it a rejection.

He maintained that Baird had invited him to stay over on the night of the alleged break-in.

The court adjourned early because of an unforeseen legal argument.