I became a celebrity chaser as a teenager and now aged 32 have chased stars from Kim Kardashian, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga to Beyoncé, Prince William and Prince Harry.
What started as a fun pastime – in which I was joined by another celebrity chasing teen, Beau Lamarre-Condon – became something of an addictive ‘game’ of who could get the most selfies with the biggest celebrities.
And in that pursuit, Lamarre-Condon was the biggest fan boy 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 so sad because it makes the wild and wonderful world of celebrity chasing seem all messed up.
It began for me when I was 16 and interested in a future as an entertainment journalist.
I was fascinated by pop stars and there was a group of about 10-15 ‘fans’ who would come together and go and meet people visiting Australia like Gwen Stefani and Hugh Grant.
Beau Lamarre-Condon with Lady Gaga, his ultimate celebrity and whose 2014 concert he used to come out as gay while pursuing the thrill of being a Sydney ‘fan boy’
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Prior to becoming a police officer, Lamarre-Condon was a celebrity blogger, notorious for grabbing selfies with stars like Jessica Hart (pictured)
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I think I first met Lady Gaga backstage in 2008. I met Richard Simpkin who had been celebrity chasing for years and had actually become friends with Michael Hutchence, the INXS frontman, who died in a Sydney hotel room in 1997.
It developed into a whole community of people who would share photos and experiences with celebs.
With online media flourishing, celebrity chasing grew and grew. Celebrity chasers – some people call them fan boys, because there’s a few females but it’s mostly males – began working with the paparazzi.
The paps would use the celebrity chasers as a way of keeping tabs on whatever star was visiting, and the chasers 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 would linger longer than Beau Lamarre-Condon and when everyone had given up and gone home, Beau would still be there going above and beyond.
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The week before the alleged murders, Beau Lamarre-Condon was still taking selfies with stars, grabbing this picture 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 other are fully invested in collecting autographs and photos with famous people. I just used to love the thrill of the chase.
Beau turned up on the celebrity chaser circuit when he was 16, in 2012, and like me had started publishing his own fan blog, That’s The Tea – ‘tea’ meaning gossip.
Beau left school early because he struggled with it and said he was bullied. He had bad acne as a teenager.
I think he got into celebrity chasing to impress people, to go back to the people he knew at school and brag about the people he’d met.
He loved pop stars and models and at first he was trying to mirror all of us, but starting off with his sister Jamila, who was about a year younger, before she dropped off because she got a boyfriend.
