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, so I started a blog called Hollywood Treatment in 2008.
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’
Prior to becoming a police officer, Lamarre-Condon was a celebrity blogger, notorious for grabbing selfies with stars like Jessica Hart (pictured)
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.
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.
Beau Lamarre-Condon (above with Taylor Swift) never succeeded in turning 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’ll talk to anyone when I’m waiting around for hours trying to photograph someone. It passes the time.
I was there when Beau was chasing Kim Kardashian, and Rihanna and Lady Gaga, who is his claim to fame, on her 2014 tour to Australia.
He had always said he was straight, but he threw a note on stage, which Lady Gaga read out, meaning he came out in front of her audience of 15,000.
That’s very Beau. He was very competitive and would talk himself up and make all sorts of claims about being friends with pop stars.
At one point there would have been four main celebrity chasers in Sydney, myself, Jayden Seyfarth, Liam Mendes and Beau Lamarre-Condon, although there were many others on the scene.
Beau Lamarre-Condon could not give up the thrill of star chasing even after becoming a cop, pursuing Kylie Jenner’s BFF Stassie Karanikolaou in Sydney after getting tipped off by Roxy Jacenko
Of the four, all of us except Beau have found jobs in the media, myself at a large media company, Jayden as a paparazzo and Liam as a journalist with The Australian.
Beau struggled with finding employment back when he was a teenager, then got a job at Big W, but his absolute dream job was to become a red carpet reporter.
He made frequent trips to Los Angeles and made it to the 2015 Golden Globe Awards. He fancied himself working for MTV.
One of the paparazzo encouraged him to get something solid behind him, like joining the police, which he could do for five years and then see. He joined the NSW Police Force in 2018.
He was later outed as a former celebrity chaser.
When he became a cop, he gained a bit more confidence and would say things like ‘Oh no I’m over it, I’ve grown up … I’m the police’ but he would always go back to it.
Lamarre-Condon with Hailey Baldwin, wife of Justin Bieber
Lamarre-Condon was a celebrity chaser before becoming a NSW Police officer
He was always trying something, said he had his own fashion label, which I really think was just out of his bedroom.
He would reach out to (PR maven) Roxy Jacenko and when she had an event he would send in bikinis.
In 2022, when Kylie Jenner’s best friend Anastasia ‘Stassie’ Karanikolaou came to Sydney for a fashion event, Roxy Jacenko did tip Beau off because he was desperate to hand deliver a bikini.
On the Wednesday before Jesse Baird and Luke Davies went missing, Beau was down at Rose Bay when Kourtney Kardashian was there with Travis Barker.
Lamarre-Condon allegedly murdered Luke Davies and Jesse Baird (pictured tog)
He just couldn’t stay away from the celebrity chasing.
I think the rush and chase of the celebrities is always exciting – but it is very time consuming, especially if you aren’t earning any money from it.
Jesse Baird would have been the coolest person Beau had met and actually got to know personally. Jesse worked as a red carpet reporter for Studio 10.
When the news came out that two men, Jesse and Luke, were missing and then we learnt that police had searched Beau’s mother’s house and wanted to interview him, I was shocked.
The world of celebrity chasing in Australia has been left stunned and amazed that someone who we all hung around with, for hours and days outside hotels and in airports waiting for the famous for the shared reasons of the thrills and the rush of the pursuit could have been charged with carrying out these alleged crimes.
