Before he was a party king, ‘The Candyman’ was a ‘massive bogan with a massive mullet’ at high school, an AFL draftee, a globe-trotting high-end fashion model, the husband of a Miss World, a divorcee, a wealthy businessman and a property mogul.
Born in Melbourne in March 1972, Beynon is the heir to the FreeChoice tobacconist retail empire.
Founded by his parents Trevor and Sandra, who live on the Gold Coast, the company claims to run more than 200 stores around the country.
In his youth, Beynon spent time between Victoria and Queensland.
He attended Clairvaux College, a boy’s school on Brisbane’s south side with the motto ‘Christ is Our Life’ for some of his high school years.
‘He was a massive bogan with a massive mullet,’ recalled one fellow student, who remembered him as a bit of a troublemaker.
‘He fancied himself as a bit of a sporting kind of guy. He used to get in trouble a bit, disappeared off the face of the earth after school’.
Beynon started his football career at Southport Sharks Football Club on the Gold Coast, where his son, Valentino, now plays.
He posted an emphatic message of support for the club in 2015: ‘This is where I started…continue to work hard at everything you do, keep your dreams alive and f— those who try to stop you!’
He was drafted to the North Melbourne Kangaroos for the 1989 pre-season but suffered a debilitating back injury.
He was traded to the Brisbane Lions the next year, where the injury is understood to have had a similar impact.
But while his AFL ambitions were over, his modelling career had just begun – with a relative saying he ‘physically transformed somehow’ in his late teens.
His agent Greg Tyshing said he met Beynon at a fashion show in Melbourne in the late 1980s.
He previously told Daily Mail Australia Beynon was one of his ‘most successful’ models, both in Australia and the United States and Europe.
He wore brands including Levi Jeans, Moschino, Valentino, Canali, Paul Smith and Calvin Klein.
He modelled comfortable-looking full-body tracksuits for department store Myer and stripped his shirt off for a Vodka Cruisers 2005 calendar.
It’s understood Beynon met his first wife, international beauty and Miss World winner Ninibeth Beatriz Jiminez Leal, while living overseas.
The pair had two children but later divorced. He has since married his second wife, Taesha, with whom he has two kids and was controversially pictured on his Instagram account leading around with her bikini straps.