Casey Donovan opens up on bizarre catfishing

She made headlines around the world when it was revealed she was catfished by a woman pretending to be a man and now Casey Donovan has spoken out about the traumatising ordeal.

The 28-year-old former Australian Idol winner, who shot to fame at the age of 16, began a telephone relationship with a person she thought was a man named Campbell, while on tour after the show.

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It went on for six long years until a then 22-year-old Casey discovered that the man she thought loved her was actually a woman called Olga.

Casey’s bizarre catfishing thrust her into the spotlight around the globe and now she’s explained how she was blindsided by the scam.

On last night’s episode of Channel 10's I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, Casey emotionally broke down as she spoke to fellow campmates Ash Pollard and Natalie Bassingthwaighte about her incredible story.

Her first encounter with Campbell was over the phone in a hotel room on tour and while he told her he would pick her up from the airport the next day he never showed.

Instead, a woman named Olga turned up, claiming to be Campbell’s best friend.

“So catfishing is when you’re tricked in to a relationship, so someone is pretending to be someone else,” Casey explained to her campmates.

“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.”

Casey said she spent six years hanging around with Olga in the hope she would one day meet Campbell in real life.

However Campbell turned out to be fake, with Casey claiming Olga was able to mimic voices when she spoke to her on the phone.

“There was always an excuse why we couldn’t meet up,” she later said in the bushtucker booth, tearing up.

“I think I’d known for a while that it wasn’t real.

“I thought that someone actually loved me for me and it was just hard to find out that it was all a lie.”

Back in camp, Casey explained to Ash that she was sucked into the lie because she was so young and had “never had a boyfriend”.

“I was always the kid that was a bit different, no one was interested in me and this guy was telling me that he loved me,” she said.

“I knew there was something wrong, I knew there was something not right.

“I was trying to get out of it because I needed to prove to myself that I wasn’t stupid. I couldn’t let someone do this to me nor could someone be so nasty as to do that to someone.”

Casey’s honesty comes after producers of the show pulled the ultimate prank on her by giving her a bushtucker trial which was sure to bring back a lot of memories.

The star, who is now an Uber driver was plunged into a tank of water alongside a real life catfish.

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