Carrie Bickmore reveals truth about her A-list hangout with ‘Travis Barker’

Carrie Bickmore has spoken out after being spotted in public with what appeared to be a touring American rocker on Valentine’s Day.

Carrie Bickmore hangs out with Travis Barker lookalike.

Carrie Bickmore has set the record straight on her supposed outing with Blink 182 rocker Travis Barker this past Valentine’s Day.

Last week, the duo were believed to be seen out and about in Melbourne, where they hopped on a tandem bike ride, had coffee at a cafe, and made a pit stop at Luna Park in St Kilda.

The pair became a hot topic given Barker is currently touring Australia with his band Blink 182 with his famous wife Kourtney Kardashian in tow. So when he apparently chose to spend Valentine’s Day with Bickmore, eyebrows were raised.

“Blink and you’ll miss him,” the Carrie & Tommy radio host captioned an Instagram Story at the time of them on their day out.

Carrie Bickmore hangs out with Travis Barker in Melbourne, but all is not as it seems.

But as it turns out, she was hanging out with a Travis Barker lookalike and wanted to see if she could fool fans into thinking he was the real deal.

“First of all, my work was a success judging from all those articles there,” she explained on-air this morning to co-host Tommy Little. “My plan worked.”

Turns out, she went on an outing with Travis Barker lookalike Hugh van Cuylenburg.

Bickmore then revealed that the man she was hanging out with was Hugh van Cuylenburg, a podcaster and founder of The Resilience Project, an initiative that aims to teach positive mental health strategies to the community.

The former schoolteacher has an uncanny resemblance to Barker that Bickmore herself once mistook him for the drummer.

“It was late last year, Hamish Blake and Zoe Foster Blake had a party and it was a dress-up party, and I watched the photos after the party and as I was flicking through, I saw Travis Barker. I thought, ‘Oh, how is Travis at the party?’”

Bickmore and ‘Barker’ hit up various Melbourne hot spots.

Many wondered why the pair were hanging out together on Valentine’s Day.

Upon closer inspection, she realised it was van Cuylenburg, who has been a guest on her radio show many times before.

“He looked so much like Travis Barker,” she insisted. “I spent most of my summer, I don’t know why, showing anyone who’ll look how much Hugh van Cuylenburg looked like Travis Barker.”

Travis Barker is currently in Australia with wife Kourtney Kardashian. Picture: Matrix Media

So when Bickmore heard the rocker will tour Australia with his band, she and her producers hatched a plan to hang out with his lookalike.

“My little brain was like, ‘Oh, should I get Hugh van Cuylenburg to dress up as Travis Barker and then we’ll hit the town?’” she recalled.

“I didn’t think it through, producers organised the date, we didn’t think through Valentine’s Day, but that was genius. It just happened to land on Valentine’s Day.”

The real deal.

Hugh van Cuylenburg.

Bickmore wondered if their little outing would make headlines after she shared photos and clips on social media – and, lo and behold, it did.

“I wondered if anybody will think that was Travis Barker and then we looked online and later that day all the articles started popping up where people genuinely believed [it was him],” she said, before adding, “And then I was thinking, what if we got it on The Kardashians? Or what if we went around town and people thought we were trying to record a duet together?”

Co-host Tommy Little couldn’t help but chuckle over Bickmore’s musings, hilariously shutting her down on-air.

“Sorry? No, they didn’t. Not one,” he replied.

Originally published as Carrie Bickmore reveals truth about her A-list hangout with ‘Travis Barker’