Courteney Cox has got Ed Sheeran to thank for a very NFSW item that keeps turning up at her home. 

The singer has revealed he keeps sending what he described as a “gimp mask” to the Friends star, after pranking her during one of his stays at her California pad. 

The pair are close pals and Ed has frequently stayed with Courteney since meeting through mutual friends in 2013, and it was during one of his visits that he decided to take advantage of Courteney’s smart home assistant. 

Appearing on The Late Late Show with James Corden in the US on Monday, Ed recalled: “She has this Alexa thing in her house, and she goes, ‘Isn’t this wonderful? This is my Alexa. I can just order whatever on this.’

“So she walks out of the room, and I go, ‘Alexa, order me a gimp mask.’”

However, when the item arrived, someone else intercepted the parcel, with unforeseen circumstances. 

“Unbeknownst to me, Courteney’s assistant found it,” Ed said. “She opened the post and she finds this mask, and instantly goes, ‘Oh, I don’t think I was meant to see that’ and leaves it on Courteney’s bed. And Courteney comes up and she’s like, ‘Where did this come from?’”

Ed said he has continued to hide a number of the leather masks around Courteney’s home, to surprise other unsuspecting visitors. 

He explained: “Now when I go back there, I order her another gimp mask. She has maybe, like, 12. I hide them in people’s bedrooms. So they’ll go in the drawer and find a leather S&M mask.

“She had two people come and look at her piano to try and buy it, two absolute strangers going into her house that I found out about. So I left a couple of masks on the piano.”

Ed and Courteney have formed a close friendship over the years, and he is even responsible for introducing her to her boyfriend, Snow Patrol’s Johnny McDaid.

The real-life Friends recently recreated one of the most iconic moments from the US sitcom, and later teamed up with Elton John and Brandy Carlile to send a musical message to Courteney’s former co-star Lisa Kudrow.