The Candyman invented as marketing gimmick to promote tobacco company, court hears

FAST cars, millions in the bank and nightly four-in-a-bed romps. But court hears Travers Beynon is up to something else.

HE’S living many straight men’s fantasy life.

Fast cars, naked women, an opulent mansion, millions in the bank and a wife who is fine with his four-in-a-bed nightly romps.

But is Beynon really Australia’s answer to Hugh Hefner?

Travers ‘The Candyman’ Beynon, the former model-turned Gold Coast tobacco seller — who says he has to come up with a new sex position every week due to his exhausting bedtime habits — is facing a different sort of hurdle in Brisbane this week.

Just another day at The Candyshop Mansion. Picture: Nathan Richter for FreeChoice Australia.

A court has heard the Candyman playboy persona is nothing but a marketing gimmick, invented to promote a deadly product that Australian law forbids him from advertising.

Mr Beynon is currently suing the national sales manager he sacked by email in 2015, and, during the first day of a three-day court hearing this week, it emerged The Candyman is actually a publicity construct.

Travers Beynon, aka ‘The Candyman’, arrives at court with both his wife and girlfriend last month.

The national human resources operations manager for Beynon’s tobacco company FreeChoice Australia, Suzanne Ozioko, told the Brisbane District Court yesterday that Mr Beynon, the company owner, “took on the persona of The Candyman” to promote the business because “we are unable to market any sort of tobacco”.

Ms Ozioko told the court “the character of The Candyman is the marketing arm if you will for the brand of FreeChoice Australia”, The Courier-Mailreported.

“So it is a persona that we use to sort of market where we can within the brand of FreeChoice Australia — we are unable to market any sort of tobacco — so it is a brand we use to entertain and market,” Ms Ozioko said.

Businessman by day.

Candyman by night. Picture: Heath Missen

Mr Beynon, who regularly attends his court hearings with both his wife and girlfriend on each arm, has taken his former national sales manager Andrew Whelan to court, in a bid to have him pay $88,000 in legal costs the company accrued.

Mr Beynon claims his company, the Cigarette and Gift Warehouse, spent the money to obtain court orders to search Mr Whelan’s home computer for confidential company documents he allegedly “stole” after he was sacked.

Mr Beynon claims Mr Whelan breached a confidentiality agreement he signed, an accusation Mr Whelan denies.

It comes a month after Mr Whelan, who has been described as The Candyman’s former right hand man, told the Federal Court that Mr Beynon used company money to pay bikini models to hang around him.

The Candyman arrives at a party at his mansion. Picture: Nathan Richter, FreeChoice Australia.

Text messages from Mr Whelan filed as evidence alleged Mr Beynon hired the bikini-clad models to “hang off” him during a trip to the French Riviera, London, and party island Ibiza in June 2015, as well as at parties at his $3.7 million “Candyshop Mansion”.

Mr Beynon has an extensive social media following and has previously allegedly courted a producer of reality TV show Big Brother to film a reality series on him.

In an interview last month, with the Gold Coast’s Ocean Road magazine, Mr Beynon, a father-of-four, gave a revealing insight into life inside the “Candyshop Mansion,” in which, he claimed he slept with four girls in his bed most nights.

Travers Beynon outside court.

“I go to bed and that’s another hurdle. When you’ve got one girl, that’s one thing. When there’s multiple, there’s so much going on in my mind,” he told the magazine.

“In bed, there’s four girls as an average. I often don’t get much sleep. What I’m like in business, life or sport, I’m like that in bed. They love my imagination and my creativity. You need that when you’ve got multiple girls.

“I think I come up with a new position every week. Bedroom time isn’t for me; it’s to stimulate the girls. To be good in bed it’s not about you.”