Casey Donovan skyrocketed to fame at the age of 16 after winning 2004’s Australian Idol.
From there Casey had a quiet period where she drove for Uber, and eventually returned to the public eye when she won 2017’s I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Outta Here!. The star’s life has been anything but ordinary – and the same can be said for her romantic history.
Casey Donovan skyrocketed to fame at the age of 16 after winning 2004’s Australian Idol.
In 2014, Casey revealed in her memoir, Casey Donovan: Big, Beautiful & Sexy, that she was in love with a man named Campbell for six years — only to discover that he never actually existed.
A female friend was later found to be behind the catfishing scheme, having fabricated all of the correspondence from the mystery man which began just after the singer’s 2004 Australian Idol win.
“No one was ever interested in me. And this guy was telling me that he loved me.”
“Catfishing is when you’re tricked into a relationship,” Casey explained during her appearance on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here. “So a girl was pretending to be a guy, and that guy was the guy I was speaking to. And it ended up being the chick that picked me up from the airport.”
“It started at 16, I’d never had a boyfriend, I was always the kid that was a bit different, no one was ever interested in me. And this guy was telling me that he loved me.”
“It’s the boyfriend, isn’t it? When are you going to get over him and move on to someone who makes you happy?” Casey recalls Jason, her manager saying.
Casey opened up to the Sydney Morning Herald this weekend, sharing a section of her 2014 autobiography reflecting on how her then manager helped her to discover that her six-year relationship with ‘Campbell’ was a lie.
One evening after a show, her manager Jason noticed that something wasn’t right and confronted the young singer about how the relationship was affecting her.
“It’s the boyfriend, isn’t it? When are you going to get over him and move on to someone who makes you happy?” Casey recalls Jason saying.
It was then Casey finally told Jason the truth.
“‘I’ve never seen him. Campbell, I mean. I’ve never met him, have never actually been with him. I’ve only ever spoken to him on the phone.’ I put one hand over my mouth, like I was trying to put the words back in. It tasted horrible and gritty, finally admitting it to someone,” Casey writes.
The pair of them, along with Jason’s partner, drove to confront Campbell where Casey believed he lived.
Following the admission, and on understanding the full story, Jason broke the harsh truth that Campbell could be her best friend Olga.
“So if Olga knows him, why hasn’t she taken you to his house? Or called him, made him come and see you? Does he call you when she’s around? Sh*t Casey, this isn’t right.”
The pair of them, along with Jason’s partner, drove to confront Campbell where Casey believed he lived.
After some investigation they discovered that no personal called Campbell lived or had ever lived at that location.
Speaking with TheFIX in September about the incident, she said: “What I went through, with the catfishing, should be teaching me a lesson not to trust people and to put your walls up. And I do to an extent but I still put trust in people that I shouldn’t… and that’s just me getting burnt.”
Watch out for Casey Donovan giving acting a go in Street Smart – a new comedy starring Fat Pizza creators Tahir Bilgic and Rob Shehadie that centres around a gang of wannabe crims constantly having run-ins with a parking officer.
