I became a celebrity chaser as a teenager and now, at 32, I’ve chased stars from Kim Kardashian, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga to Beyoncé, Prince William and Prince Harry.
What started as a fun hobby, in which I was joined by another celebrity-chasing teenager, Beau Lamarre-Condon, became a kind of addictive “game” of who could get the most selfies with the biggest celebrities.
And in that quest, Lamarre-Condon was the biggest fan of them all.
Now that he has been charged with the alleged murders of TV presenter Jesse Baird and his partner Luke Davies, I feel very sad because it makes the wild and wonderful world of celebrity chasing look like a mess.
It all started for me when I was 16 and interested in a future as an entertainment journalist, so I started a blog called Hollywood Treatment in 2008.
I was fascinated by pop stars and there was a group of 10 to 15 ‘fans’ who would get together and go meet people visiting Australia, like Gwen Stefani and Hugh Grant.
Beau Lamarre-Condon with Lady Gaga, his biggest celebrity and at whose 2014 concert he used to come out as gay while chasing the thrill of being a Sydney fan boy.
Before becoming a police officer, Lamarre-Condon was a famous blogger, known for taking selfies with stars like Jessica Hart (pictured).
I think I met Lady Gaga backstage in 2008. I met Richard Simpkin, who had been chasing celebrities for years and had actually become friends with Michael Hutchence, the frontman of INXS, who died in a Sydney hotel room in 1997.
It became a whole community of people sharing photos and experiences with celebrities.
With the flourishing of online media, the search for celebrities grew and grew. Celebrity hunters (some call them fan boys, because there are some women but most are men) began working with the paparazzi.
Newspapers used celebrity hunters as a way to keep an eye on any visiting star, and the hunters would stay for hours, days, outside a hotel or wherever just to get that autograph or selfie.
The competition could get very intense and there was no one who stayed longer than Beau Lamarre-Condon and when everyone had given up and gone home, Beau would still be there going further.
The week before the alleged murders, Beau Lamarre-Condon was still taking selfies with stars, taking this photo with Kourtney Kardashian and her husband Travis Barker.
The reason people chase celebrities is because it’s exciting: there’s always a rush.
Some people like to collect stamps and others are completely dedicated to collecting autographs and photographs of famous people. I used to love the thrill of the chase.
Beau appeared on the celebrity-hunting circuit when he was 16, in 2012, and, like me, had begun publishing his own fan blog, That’s The Tea (‘tea’ means gossip).
Beau left school early because he got into trouble and said he was bullied. He had severe acne when he was a teenager.
I think he got into celebrity searching to impress people, get back with people he knew at school, and brag about people he’d met.
He loved pop stars and models and at first tried to reflect us all, but he started with his sister Jamila, who was about a year younger, before she dumped him because she got a boyfriend.
Beau Lamarre-Condon (above with Taylor Swift) never managed to turn the heady game of celebrity chasing into his dream job: becoming a red carpet reporter.
He has been photographed alongside high-profile Hollywood stars including Miley Cyrus (pictured).
We became sort of friends: I talk to anyone when I’m waiting for hours trying to photograph someone. Time passes.
I was there when Beau was chasing Kim Kardashian, Rihanna and Lady Gaga, who is his claim to fame, on their 2014 tour of Australia.
He had always said he was straight, but he threw a note on stage, which Lady Gaga read, meaning he went out in front of his audience of 15,000.
That’s very Beau. He was very competitive and talked about himself and made all kinds of claims about being friends with pop stars.
At one point, there would have been four main celebrity hunters in Sydney: myself, Jayden Seyfarth, Liam Mendes and Beau Lamarre-Condon, although there were many others on the scene.
Beau Lamarre-Condon couldn’t give up the thrill of chasing stars even after becoming a cop, chasing down Kylie Jenner’s best friend Stassie Karanikolaou in Sydney after Roxy Jacenko tipped him off.
Of the four of us, all but Beau have found work in the media, me at a large media company, Jayden as a paparazzo and Liam as a journalist at The Australian.
Beau struggled to find employment as a teenager, then landed a job at Big W, but his dream job was to become a red carpet reporter.
He traveled frequently to Los Angeles and arrived at the 2015 Golden Globes. He imagined working for MTV.
One of the paparazzo encouraged him to leave something solid behind him, like joining the police, something he could do for five years and then see. He joined the New South Wales Police in 2018.
He was later outed as a former celebrity hunter.
When he became a police officer, he gained a little more confidence and said things like ‘Oh no, I’m over it, I’ve grown up… I’m the police,’ but he always came back to that.
Lamarre-Condon with Hailey Baldwin, wife of Justin Bieber
Lamarre-Condon was a celebrity hunter before becoming a New South Wales Police officer
He was always trying something, he said he had his own fashion brand, which I really think he just left his room.
He would get close to (PR expert) Roxy Jacenko and when she had an event, he would send her bikinis.
In 2022, when Kylie Jenner’s best friend Anastasia ‘Stassie’ Karanikolaou came to Sydney for a fashion event, Roxy Jacenko alerted Beau because she was desperate to hand-deliver a bikini.
The Wednesday before Jesse Baird and Luke Davies disappeared, Beau was in Rose Bay when Kourtney Kardashian was there with Travis Barker.
Lamarre-Condon allegedly murdered Luke Davies and Jesse Baird (pictured together)
He just couldn’t stay away from the celebrity chase.
I think the hustle and chase of celebrities is always exciting, but it takes a lot of time, especially if you don’t make any money from it.
Jesse Baird would have been the coolest person Beau had ever met and gotten to know personally. Jesse worked as a red carpet reporter for Studio 10.
When the news broke that two men, Jesse and Luke, were missing and then we found out that the police had searched Beau’s mother’s house and wanted to interview him, I was shocked.
The celebrity chasing world in Australia has been left stunned and amazed that someone we all hung out with, for hours and days outside hotels and at airports waiting for celebrities for the shared reasons of excitement and the thrill of persecution, could have been accused of carrying out these alleged crimes.