Books, TV and films are littered with characters who want to desert their current life and restart. There is something inherently dramatic about this abrupt change. Like Tom Ripley, the chameleonic character in Ms Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr Ripley (“I always thought it would be better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody”), these people are often fleeing the clutches of the police. But sometimes, like Delia Grinstead in Ms Ann Tyler’s 1995 novel Ladder Of Years, they simply wish to run away. Or see an opportunity to just be someone else, like Don Draper in Mad Men.

Occasionally, these people are real. Mr Michael Finkel’s 2017 book, Stranger In The Woods, is about Mr Christopher Knight, a man who did abandon everything to live in a forest for 27 years.

This urge to break free, to start again and assume an exciting new identity, is perhaps deep within all of us. When things are unbearable at work or tough at home, who among us doesn’t yearn to sack it off and live on a desert island with a fake moustache? I can’t count the number of times I’ve fantasised about moving to the south of Italy, buying a leather jacket and living out the rest of my days as Signor Inglese.

And yet, in 2023, disappearing into thin air is almost impossible. We have abandoned analogue ways of carrying out pretty much any task. Do you know anyone without a phone? When was the last time you used cash anywhere other than on a pint of milk at the local market? Would you know how to use a paper map if you saw one (let alone fold it back up)? In the name of convenience, we have surrendered control of our privacy and turned ourselves into glaring blue dots, alerting the world to our whereabouts, burping out data all the time.

“Probably about 97 per cent of people are easy to find, based off the data that we have access to,” says a private detective who wants to be known as Tim, who works for Private Detective London. “We’re constantly being monitored, all the time. All day, every day, some organisation is asking for our data.” Spend enough time in a café, for example, and you might want to use the free Wi-Fi. In the terms and conditions, it is likely to say that the internet provider can sell your data. “So, it’s probably sold on within 24 hours several times,” Tim says.

As well as consent data, there is credit data, which can be bought for the right reasons by someone looking to track you down. It’s extremely hard to escape your current life, Tim says. In the physical world, your face is being captured on a camera of some kind at every turn. Worse, security cameras are now beginning to use (controversial) facial-recognition technology, creating a history of where you’ve been. “You are constantly laying these footprints,” Tim says.

Even leaving the country without a trace is near-impossible, given that you are logged and tracked by government agencies who scan not just your passport but your face as soon as you enter the airport. There’s no way around that without breaking the law. Passports are the ultimate method of keeping tabs on you.

So, how can it be done? How can you join the three per cent of people in the world who are managing to fly under the radar? “If I wanted to completely disappear,” Tim says, “The first thing I’d do is get my mobile phone, switch it off, take my SIM card out, remove a battery if it was possible and throw all three of them in three separate bins. And then I would get all my credit cards, cut them up, throw them away and have cash in my pocket.”

You would have to leave behind everything else about your identity, he says. If you wanted to live somewhere new, but keep your old name, for example, the moment you rented a property, the bank would be involved. You’d start to leave breadcrumbs.

But really, if you wanted to completely disappear into a new life, you’d need not just a new name, but an entirely new appearance – and we don’t just mean fashion sense.

This would help you evade any facial recognition technology and anyone dogged enough to have followed you across borders and over oceans. In my mind’s eye, Signor Inglese would be almost indescribably good-looking, with long, auburn curls and teeth as white as an Italian coffee cup.

As with so many things, the ability to start afresh in this way relies on money: in order for the whole charade to work, you’d need to pay for a new house, a new passport and, ideally, a new face. Disappearing doesn’t come cheap. But it might just be possible, to anyone with deep pockets and enough motivation. It’s “difficult to do, but not impossible”, Tim says.

So, time to contact a plastic surgeon and start learning a new signature. Your new life awaits. I’ll see you in Italy. I’ll be the one in the leather jacket, staring wistfully out at the waves, smiling an almost imperceptible smile to myself. Oh, damn, why am I telling you all this? Forget I said anything.