Speaker 1: You're listening to a Mother of mea podcast if you
Speaker 1: love extraordinary stories. M plus subscribers get early access to
Speaker 1: new episodes and seasons of the show. To listen to
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Speaker 1: or follow the link in the episode description.
Speaker 2: Hi Ert, I'm Grace Rufray, one of the podcast producers
Speaker 2: here at Mamma Mia. If you're listening to this you
Speaker 2: are a fan of extraordinary stories where you can immerse
Speaker 2: yourself in a different world, and this podcast does just
Speaker 2: that as we dig deeper into the truth and tragedy
Speaker 2: of some of the world's most remarkable women, from Ida
Speaker 2: butt Rose to Charlotte Dawson to Amanda Bin's Extraordinary lives
Speaker 2: told by extraordinary people. Just this week, Netflix released Apple
Speaker 2: Cider Vinegar, a new drama series inspired by one of
Speaker 2: Australia's most notorious scams, the Bell Gibson Story. While the
Speaker 2: Netflix the show dramatizes these events, we wanted to reshare
Speaker 2: with you the real investigation into how a young wellness
Speaker 2: blogger managed to convince hundreds of thousands of people she
Speaker 2: had terminal brain cancer when she didn't have cancer at all.
Speaker 2: Not only did Bell Gibson full her massive social media following,
Speaker 2: but she deceived major publishing houses, tech giants like Apple,
Speaker 2: and even her closest friends and family, all while making
Speaker 2: hundreds of thousands of dollars from her lines. The series
Speaker 2: is in three parts where the host, Emma Gillespie, spoke
Speaker 2: to people who sat across from Bell, people who were
Speaker 2: taken in by her deception, and these people who helped
Speaker 2: expose one of the biggest wellness industry scandals Australia has
Speaker 2: ever seen. This is the true story of Bell Gibson
Speaker 2: and how she pulled off a con that shook the
Speaker 2: foundations of the wellness industry and changed the way we
Speaker 2: think about social media influence forever. In Part one of
Speaker 2: the story, we look at the rise of Bell Gibson
Speaker 2: from tall tales in school drama classes to international acclaim
Speaker 2: and influence. How did Annabel Natalie Gibson become the pinup
Speaker 2: girl for the wellness movement.
Speaker 1: On a warm summer's day in twenty fourteen, some of
Speaker 1: Australia's most impressive women gathered at Woolemloo's famous Fingerwarfs on
Speaker 1: Sydney Harbor. They were there to celebrate Cosmopolitan Magazine's Fun
Speaker 1: Fearless Female Awards. Everything was sparkling, the water, the sky
Speaker 1: and the cocktails. Laughter echoed out across the wharf. A
Speaker 1: Samantha Armitage sipped and nibbled alongside Jodi and Asta just
Speaker 1: into Franklin, Lisa Wilkinson, Dummy Im, Hollywood it girl, Tara Reid,
Speaker 1: and Belle Gibson. If now that name brings with it
Speaker 1: the weighty infamy of a notorious scam, then it did not.
Speaker 1: Then Bell was there to be celebrated.
Speaker 3: So it's really disaster. When a social media I started
Speaker 3: posting about just fine day, it was interesting, but was encourigh.
Speaker 4: By friend's family because they knew that what I was
Speaker 4: sharing someone else.
Speaker 1: Interesting in She was what we now know as an influencer,
Speaker 1: a young entrepreneurial mother whose cookbook and iPhone app were
Speaker 1: a huge success, and she didn't look even a little
Speaker 1: bit out of place alongside Sydney's social a list, dressed
Speaker 1: in white, apparently glowing with health, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: a very large piece of her story and appeal was
Speaker 1: that she was far from healthy. Belle was going through
Speaker 1: a very public battle with a malignant brain tumor, just
Speaker 1: the latest, she claimed in a series of life threatening
Speaker 1: illnesses she'd been diagnosed with since she was a teenager.
Speaker 1: It was why she was there as Cosmo's editor at
Speaker 1: the time. Bronwyn McCann says, you wanted.
Speaker 5: To hug her.
Speaker 6: That's the best description. She had, this very sweet nature,
Speaker 6: very personable, shiny eyes where you just thought, gosh, you're
Speaker 6: going through so much and.
Speaker 7: Look at you.
Speaker 6: You're clever girl, that you've done all of this stuff
Speaker 6: with the app and Apple and everything, and even looking
Speaker 6: back now, not at all would you ever go there
Speaker 6: was something dodgy about her, Not at all.
Speaker 1: She was the sweetest, but there was something dodgy about
Speaker 1: Belle Gibson from Mamma Mia. Welcome to Extraordinary Stories, the
Speaker 1: podcast that takes you inside the stories you thought you knew,
Speaker 1: with the women who really do. I'm your host, Emma Gillespie.
Speaker 1: On this season of Extraordinary Stories, we're looking at the
Speaker 1: young woman who fooled not only her hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of followers, but the most prestigious book publishers in Australia,
Speaker 1: the tech giants of Silicon Valley, and even her family
Speaker 1: and friends into believing she was something she was not,
Speaker 1: sick and making lots of money as she did it.
Speaker 1: You're going to hear from the people she tricked.
Speaker 8: I'm getting sicker, I'm having chemo, I'm following all of
Speaker 8: what the doctors say to do, and I'm nearly dying.
Speaker 9: And she's living her best life.
Speaker 1: The people who sat face to face with her.
Speaker 10: When I met Bell Gibson, she was more concerned about
Speaker 10: the impact on herself. She knew to talk in a
Speaker 10: sympathetic way about the people that she'd met, but I
Speaker 10: think that no, she was most upset about the effect on.
Speaker 1: Her and the people who had never seen anything like
Speaker 1: it ever.
Speaker 7: I haven't seen an example of online misleading and deceptive
Speaker 7: conduct of this sort of scale in this country or
Speaker 7: frankly anywhere.
Speaker 6: She doesn't have cancer, she has no brainshumors. Everything is
Speaker 6: a lie.
Speaker 1: This is extraordinary stories Belle Gibson. Wynham is an unremarkable
Speaker 1: suburb of Brisbane, wide streets weatherboard Queenslanders, with iconic verandas
Speaker 1: and a view overlooking Morton Bay. There's a jetty mangroves,
Speaker 1: a popular waiting pool frequented by local kids in the
Speaker 1: summer holidays. It's also where Annabelle Natalie Gibson grew up.
Speaker 1: Born in October nineteen ninety one, Her story starts there
Speaker 1: in Queensland. It's not necessarily the kind of place you
Speaker 1: might imagine as home to a master criminal. But then again,
Speaker 1: Bell Gibson's origin story isn't particularly easy to piece together,
Speaker 1: but there are a few things we can be sure of.
Speaker 1: One of them is that Belle Gibson grew up at
Speaker 1: least for a time, in Winnhem with her mum Natalie,
Speaker 1: and her brother Nick. Despite its suburban charm nowadays, back
Speaker 1: in the early two thousands there was a spike in
Speaker 1: local crime around Winnham. For example, police had enforced a
Speaker 1: band on hoodies to deal with the increasing amount of
Speaker 1: armed robberies in the area, and things at Bell's place
Speaker 1: weren't always easy. According to Belle, she had a nomadic childhood,
Speaker 1: having never met her father and constantly moving between cities
Speaker 1: before settling in Brisbane. She told The Australian Woman's Weekly
Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 7: When I started school, my mum went my daughter's all
Speaker 7: grown up.
Speaker 11: Now.
Speaker 7: All of a sudden, I was walking to school on
Speaker 7: my own, making school lunches and cleaning the house. Every day.
Speaker 7: It was my responsibility to do grocery shopping, do the washing,
Speaker 7: arrange medical appointments, and pick up my brother. I didn't
Speaker 7: have toys.
Speaker 1: Claire Weaver, the journalist who interviewed her for that story,
Speaker 1: says Belle claimed she was also burdened with responsible beyond
Speaker 1: her years as a young girl, things like caring for
Speaker 1: her autistic brother.
Speaker 11: There might be truth in there, As with some other
Speaker 11: things Belle has said, There might be There might be
Speaker 11: the case that some of it's true and some of
Speaker 11: it's been exaggerated or elaborated. Maybe she had just had
Speaker 11: had this really terrible, bleak childhood. But I can't help think,
Speaker 11: given the pattern of what she said more recently, that
Speaker 11: maybe some of it she's built upon and exaggerated.
Speaker 1: Nick Toscano and Bo Donnelly, a Melbourne based journalist who
Speaker 1: wrote a book about Belle Gibson it's called The Woman
Speaker 1: Who Fooled the World. Bo told Channel ten in twenty
Speaker 1: seventeen that Belle may have had a difficult childhood.
Speaker 5: Belle certainly has come from a troubled upbringing. She's come
Speaker 5: from a lot of instability. Indeed, it doesn't excuse what
Speaker 5: she's done, but we were left sort of feeling somewhat
Speaker 5: sympathetic towards her. Of course, it doesn't excuse the sort
Speaker 5: of wrongdoing and the deceit and the way she led
Speaker 5: actual cancer sufferers astray. But look, someone who who was
Speaker 5: mentally healthy, completely mentally healthy, I don't think would have
Speaker 5: been able to perpetuate such a life for so long.
Speaker 12: So I think there is an element of sympathy.
Speaker 1: After apparent instability at home in her early years, Belle
Speaker 1: seemed to have found her feet by high school, and
Speaker 1: she thrived. Her teachers described her as a high achiever,
Speaker 1: an exemplary pupil, but she also excelled outside of the classroom.
Speaker 1: Bell enrolled in acting classes at the Mercury Youth Theater.
Speaker 1: According to her drama teacher, she was quite good, and
Speaker 1: she was renowned as a great storyteller among her peers,
Speaker 1: Kelsey gamble knew Bell threw acting classes and remembers her
Speaker 1: well partly for the way the other students reacted to
Speaker 1: what they saw as her fantasist side. Kelsey told Nick
Speaker 1: Toscano and Bo Donald.
Speaker 11: She was extremely well known for what basically amounts to
Speaker 11: compulsive lying.
Speaker 1: She was honestly a laughing stock half the time. People
Speaker 1: made fun of her. Bell told classmates she was a
Speaker 1: test tube baby well part of the witness protection program.
Speaker 1: But there was one theme that began to emerge in
Speaker 1: her tall tales, and it stuck around stories of medical
Speaker 1: dramas and incredible recovery. Bell told many people that she'd
Speaker 1: suffered major heart problems and had even undergone a series
Speaker 1: of life saving operations. Bell's former boyfriend, Jacob he heard
Speaker 1: a lot of Bell's stories.
Speaker 13: She couldn't go five minutes without making up a story
Speaker 13: back then. It was about her heart, and it all
Speaker 13: just went over the top of my head because it
Speaker 13: was just so frequent. That's how she works. She just
Speaker 13: opens her mouth and starts saying stories.
Speaker 1: By the time she was eighteen, Belle had left school
Speaker 1: and moved to Perth. That's where she found her first
Speaker 1: online audience. It's also where, according to The Weekly, Bell
Speaker 1: started working in a call center at a private health
Speaker 1: insurance firm. She was speaking to sick people day in,
Speaker 1: day out and hearing all about their illnesses. She told
Speaker 1: Claire Weaver.
Speaker 7: At the time, I was hearing some horrible things about
Speaker 7: what people were going through.
Speaker 1: Bell's first blogging experience came through a chat room about
Speaker 1: rock band The Flaming Lips. She told that community she
Speaker 1: was posting from a Perth hospital ward, where she was
Speaker 1: waiting for the first of three or more operations to
Speaker 1: remove fluid from around her heart. Bell described in vivid
Speaker 1: detail a series of operations, specialist appointments, even visits to
Speaker 1: the hospital chapel. She said she was undergoing tests for
Speaker 1: a heart tumor and preparing for chemotherapy. Bell also wrote
Speaker 1: that she went into a coma after dying on the
Speaker 1: operating table.
Speaker 7: The doctor comes in and tells me the draining failed
Speaker 7: and I went into cardiac arrest and died for just
Speaker 7: under three minutes. I went straight into a coma situation
Speaker 7: for six hours and just woke up crying for my iPhone.
Speaker 7: They're amazed, I'm sitting up already and claim a miracle. Anyway,
Speaker 7: the procedure failed and I died pretty Nuly.
Speaker 1: After her alleged major heart surgery, there was another turning
Speaker 1: point in Bell's story. She got the cervical cancer vaccine,
Speaker 1: a HPV immunization that began to roll out across Australia.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and seven, Bell wrote that after getting
Speaker 1: her second vaccination, she suffered a stroke. It was a
Speaker 1: strange claim, as doctor Brad Mackay, Sydney GP and author
Speaker 1: of Fake Medicine explains.
Speaker 12: Back in two thousand and nine, Bell Gibson said that
Speaker 12: she received a terrible diagnosis from her doctor. She said
Speaker 12: that she was diagnosed with brain cancer. It was terminal
Speaker 12: and she only had a few months to live. So
Speaker 12: this is a really odd part of the story where
Speaker 12: Bell Gibson was saying that she had been immunised against
Speaker 12: cervical cancer and then subsequently had had a stroke and
Speaker 12: then that had led to brain cancer. So it's sort
Speaker 12: of like blaming a vaccine on getting cancer. But what
Speaker 12: we know about using the HPV, the human papalomavirus vaccine,
Speaker 12: is that it's not been linked at all with cancer.
Speaker 12: It's not linked with stroke whatsoever, so blaming it is
Speaker 12: a little bit far fetched. We do know that it's
Speaker 12: great at stopping people from getting cervical cancer and also
Speaker 12: genital wartz, but also with brain cancer. If that's growing,
Speaker 12: that could potentially break a blood vessel and then cause
Speaker 12: a stroke to happen. But a stroke itself, like a
Speaker 12: bleed within the brain, that's not going to trigger a
Speaker 12: cancer to then occur. It's the wrong way round.
Speaker 1: It's at this point that eighteen year old Bell says
Speaker 1: she was introduced to a man called doctor Mark John's
Speaker 1: by a group of anti vaccination campaigners. Bell said doctor
Speaker 1: John's was a neurologist and immunologist from Melbourne's Peter McCallum
Speaker 1: Cancer Center. This introduction would set about a chain of
Speaker 1: events that would eventually bring Bell to Melbourn, where she
Speaker 1: settled permanently and where everything was about to change. You'll
Speaker 1: hear more about doctor John's later in Bell's story. It
Speaker 1: was twenty ten. Bell was living in Melbourne with her
Speaker 1: boyfriend Nathan Corbett. She'd been diagnosed with brain cancer, and
Speaker 1: she was about to give birth to her son, Oliver.
Speaker 1: It was around this time that Belle claimed she underwent
Speaker 1: conventional treatment for this malignant brain tumor. Doctor Brad MacKaye
Speaker 1: says there are a few options that would be presented
Speaker 1: to patients with Bell's diagnosis.
Speaker 12: The treatment options that Bell would have been offered would
Speaker 12: have been things like chemotherapy, radiotherapy, so poisons into the
Speaker 12: vein to try to kill the cancer. And radiotherapy so
Speaker 12: putting X rays towards where the cancers were to try
Speaker 12: to shrink them down. Sometimes we would engage with surgery.
Speaker 12: So many people with brain cancer will have a scar
Speaker 12: on the side of their head where a surgeons have
Speaker 12: gone and to remove it.
Speaker 1: But Belle would eventually describe how she abandoned these treatments
Speaker 1: in favor of holistic remedies and alternative medicine.
Speaker 12: So Belle said that she went in for treatment at
Speaker 12: the hospital, that she went to the oncology ward, and
Speaker 12: that she received treatment. She was saying that it was
Speaker 12: just too much for her, that it was if she
Speaker 12: was feeling overwhelmed. She didn't really know what to do.
Speaker 12: She wasn't wanting to persevere with the typical medical model
Speaker 12: with westernized treatment, and so she decided at that time
Speaker 12: that she wanted to take some alternative remedies. She wanted
Speaker 12: to do her own research and figure out what would
Speaker 12: work for her and her body.
Speaker 1: At that time, this became a crucial turning point in
Speaker 1: Bell's blogs. Today, wellness influences are a mainstream staple of
Speaker 1: every social media platform, but in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 1: they were just beginning to flourish. Many of us hadn't
Speaker 1: even heard of the word wellness. Known as the original
Speaker 1: wellness warrior, Jessica Ainsco, another young woman from Queensland, was
Speaker 1: documenting her alternative cancer treatment online to an ever growing audience.
Speaker 1: Jessica was a writer and blogger, an online editor for
Speaker 1: Dolly magazine, living what she deemed her hectic dream life
Speaker 1: in Sydney when she was diagnosed with an extremely rare
Speaker 1: and aggressive sarcoma. She was only twenty three. The cancer
Speaker 1: was in her left arm and hand, and after being
Speaker 1: told that her best treatment option was amputation, jess had
Speaker 1: decided to try to heal herself without traditional cancer treatment
Speaker 1: and to document the process. Jessica was a devotee of
Speaker 1: Gerson therapy, a food based protocol that claims to cure
Speaker 1: all kinds of serious ailments, most famously cancer, with an
Speaker 1: all vegetarian diet and a strict regime of fruit and
Speaker 1: veggie juices and coffee enemas. Here's jess describing her daily routine.
Speaker 14: So basically, a day of the life of a Gerson
Speaker 14: person is I wake up at six o'clock in the
Speaker 14: morning and I do my first coffee animal, so it's
Speaker 14: onto the bathroom floor when I do my animal, and
Speaker 14: then I go upstairs and I meditate for about half
Speaker 14: an hour to twenty five minutes, and then breakfast is
Speaker 14: at quarter past seven when we have our first.
Speaker 15: Juice, which is orange juice.
Speaker 3: So breakfast at seven, and then the next juice is
Speaker 3: at eight, and.
Speaker 14: The real veggie juice is starting from them, and it's.
Speaker 11: One veggie juice every hour on the.
Speaker 14: Hour right up until six o'clock in the evening. So yeah,
Speaker 14: basically week throughout the day, and we also have we
Speaker 14: do five coffee animals throughout the day, so spread between
Speaker 14: a few hours between each one. We have three four
Speaker 14: meals each day breakfast, lunch, and.
Speaker 1: Dinner, all at the same time every day.
Speaker 14: And basically, yeah, the therapy goes like that we're wrong,
Speaker 14: like a bit of a military regime.
Speaker 1: Actually on the hour, every hour right up until we
Speaker 1: go to bed at ten o'clock, Doctor Brad says. During
Speaker 1: her treatment, jess ains Co built up an online profile
Speaker 1: promoting her belief that food was medicine.
Speaker 12: Gerson therapy has been a therapy that's been around for
Speaker 12: many many years, even from like the sixties and seventies.
Speaker 12: It's a treatment that involves doing lots and lots of juices,
Speaker 12: so fresh vegetables and fruit, putting them into a big juicer.
Speaker 12: And even it's quite onerous because you have to have
Speaker 12: the juice on the hour, every hour, every day for
Speaker 12: a long time. It also involves using enemas that usually
Speaker 12: either contain coffee or caster oil. And again you need
Speaker 12: to be doing these these enemas a couple of times
Speaker 12: a day at the least, with the whole principle that
Speaker 12: you're trying to rid your body of toxins, getting rid
Speaker 12: of toxins that could be sitting in your lower and
Speaker 12: testine and evacuating them. So yeah, like it hasn't been
Speaker 12: proven to work, and suddenly there are practitioners around the
Speaker 12: world that still do it, but suddenly it's not recommended
Speaker 12: in Australia.
Speaker 1: Australia's wellness army was swelling and just like Jess Belle
Speaker 1: was going to be a part of it. Bill Gibson
Speaker 1: is part of a new breed of entrepreneur. She is
Speaker 1: an ecopreneur.
Speaker 9: He tastes that Mango Bell launched.
Speaker 1: The Whole Pantry at last year. Belle Gibson was a
Speaker 1: single mother living in Melbourne. When she was told she
Speaker 1: only had four months to live, She said she tried chemotherapy,
Speaker 1: then radiation. She said, she then started exploring alternative therapies,
Speaker 1: including Gerson. Just like Jess, there's no scientific evidence that
Speaker 1: Gerson therapy cures cancer, but Belle was alive and thriving.
Speaker 1: Whatever she was doing, it seemed to work. So in
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, Bell Gibson decided, I'd just like Jess to
Speaker 1: share her story with the world on Instagram, speaking candidly
Speaker 1: about her cancer and the wellness journey she believed was
Speaker 1: healing it, documenting the highs and lows of her day
Speaker 1: to day experiences. It was her blog and social media
Speaker 1: platforms that would eventually land her a ground breaking app
Speaker 1: and a best selling book. Just like Jess Ainsco had
Speaker 1: publicly documented, Belle claimed she was curing herself through food
Speaker 1: and lifestyle, not medicine. Not only did her quickly growing
Speaker 1: follower base believe Bell, they gave her the attention she craved,
Speaker 1: out pourings of sympathy and concern, and perhaps most importantly,
Speaker 1: fellow cancer sufferers looked to her for hope. To them,
Speaker 1: this brave young woman was a beacon. If she was
Speaker 1: doing so well, surely they could too. In twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: Kylie Willie was in a hospital bed feeling defeated and
Speaker 1: hopeless when she started following Belle Gibson on social media. Kylie,
Speaker 1: accustomed to an active lifestyle as a personal trainer, had
Speaker 1: recently gained thirty kilos. Her long brown hair had fallen out.
Speaker 1: Kylie had been diagnosed with grade three B T cell
Speaker 1: lymphoblastic lymphoma in her early forties. She had not one,
Speaker 1: but several tumors from her pelvis all the way up
Speaker 1: to her neck.
Speaker 8: I was completely shocked because I didn't smoke, you know, yoh,
Speaker 8: I'd like a glass of wine. But it was nothing excessive,
Speaker 8: lived a healthy life, no history of lymphoma in my family.
Speaker 8: Just a complete and utter mind blowing shock.
Speaker 1: In a race to stop the cancer spreading to her brain,
Speaker 1: Kylie had begun aggressive chemotherapy. It caused her physical pain
Speaker 1: in a way she had never experienced before. Her body ached.
Speaker 1: She felt constantly nauseous.
Speaker 8: My girlfriend came to visit me at the Alfred and
Speaker 8: she was chatting about Bell and talking about how she
Speaker 8: has been going through treatment for cancer.
Speaker 9: But She's curing herself with eating really healthy, clean diet.
Speaker 8: And you know, she wasn't going through the chemo or
Speaker 8: anything like that, and she was getting better. Yeah, so
Speaker 8: I sort of was thinking, here, I am in the hospital,
Speaker 8: following the protocols, having.
Speaker 9: Chemotherapy, getting sicker.
Speaker 8: There's Belle gibbson writing books, starting deals with Apple. She's
Speaker 8: got brain cancer, which is so much worse than mine.
Speaker 9: She's having this clean diet.
Speaker 8: I was obviously eating the food that was provided by
Speaker 8: the Alfred which isn't great.
Speaker 9: You know, it's hospital food.
Speaker 8: And I'm getting sicker, I'm having chemo, I'm following all
Speaker 8: of what the doctors say to do, and I'm nearly dying.
Speaker 9: And she's living her best life.
Speaker 1: By twenty thirteen, Belle had well and truly found her
Speaker 1: stride and her voice. Within a year of announcing on
Speaker 1: social media that she'd been healing her brain cancer with
Speaker 1: foods and alternative therapies, her ideas were turned into an app.
Speaker 1: It was called The Whole Pantry, and it was full
Speaker 1: of the kind of food that Bell was eating. It
Speaker 1: would go on to win awards, be championed by Apple,
Speaker 1: be described as groundbreaking and garner Bell Gibson International acclaim
Speaker 1: and a very lucrative book deal.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I had the book, I had the app, I
Speaker 8: donated money to her, I went on all the Bell
Speaker 8: Gibson rides.
Speaker 1: So what was it all about? What was the Whole Pantry.
Speaker 15: A recipe colection full of whole foods and vegetarian recipes,
Speaker 15: which is the way that we encourage people to get
Speaker 15: back to the fundamentals of eating more fruits and vegetables.
Speaker 1: The Whole Pantry app was celebrated as a sleek database
Speaker 1: full of thoughtful recipes accompanied by lifestyle tips and tricks,
Speaker 1: wrapped up in a beautifully designed to face with the
Speaker 1: iconic logo of two white leaves on a tealed background.
Speaker 1: One of the world's richest, most recognizable, most influential companies
Speaker 1: loved it. Apple saw something in Bell, and she quickly
Speaker 1: found her place in an elite inner circle of app
Speaker 1: developers who'd won over the trust and loyalty of the
Speaker 1: global tech juggernaut. When they realized what a hit Bell's
Speaker 1: app was on iPhones, Apple made a bold decision to
Speaker 1: incorporate The Whole Pantry as a preloaded application on a
Speaker 1: brand new product, one that was set to revolutionize the
Speaker 1: wearable tech space. The good Apple.
Speaker 16: Watch is the most personal device we've ever created. We
Speaker 16: set out to make the best watch in the world.
Speaker 16: We love to make great products that really enrich people's lives.
Speaker 5: We love to.
Speaker 16: Integrate hardware, software and services seamlessly. We love to make
Speaker 16: technology more personal and allow our users to do things
Speaker 16: that they could never have imagined.
Speaker 1: This was a big deal to have an Aussie app
Speaker 1: in the position the whole pantry had found itself in,
Speaker 1: and for that app to be in the wellness space,
Speaker 1: it just hadn't been done before. Here's what Belle had
Speaker 1: to say about what it was like to be on
Speaker 1: the ground at Apple, HQ and Koopatino for that very announcement.
Speaker 4: You know, it took seven months worth of development, and
Speaker 4: I put everything that I knew along my journey with cancer,
Speaker 4: nutrition and wellness and put it on the most successible
Speaker 4: device possible, the iPhone, And it's just onwards and utwords
Speaker 4: from there. With the Apple Watch, it's even more accessible
Speaker 4: and it's an even more personal experience and more personal
Speaker 4: journey to living the whole life and adopting the support
Speaker 4: and the resources that we put there for you. My developer,
Speaker 4: and I had come over here four weeks ago now
Speaker 4: and we've I've been working every day on our Apple
Speaker 4: Watch app. And it's been hard.
Speaker 9: It's been hard.
Speaker 4: It's been hard because of the jet lag. Has been
Speaker 4: hard being a startup and dropped in amongst the twitters
Speaker 4: and the BMW's of the world. But we're a static
Speaker 4: with what we've come out with.
Speaker 1: The world was at her feet, and a huge publishing
Speaker 1: house took note. Bell signed a deal with Penguin Random
Speaker 1: House to turn the best selling app into a book
Speaker 1: filled with recipes and detailing Bell's moving story.
Speaker 9: She was the complete well appeared to be the complete package.
Speaker 9: You know, the big.
Speaker 8: Glowing smile and the beautiful hair and the perfect skin,
Speaker 8: and you know, she seemed patient and in control and
Speaker 8: also backed by all of these people that thought that
Speaker 8: she was doing the right thing as well.
Speaker 9: She had signed a deal with Penguin Books, she had
Speaker 9: a contract with Apple.
Speaker 8: She of course she was legit beacause otherwise these companies
Speaker 8: wouldn't have been backing her, they wouldn't.
Speaker 9: Be a part of her story as well.
Speaker 1: This was the peak of Bell's success, an app, a book, awards, followers, fame,
Speaker 1: all of that brought her to the Woollomloo Wharves that
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen day for Cosmo's Fun Fearless Awards, where Bell
Speaker 1: took out the social media category, trying to take.
Speaker 3: On kind of vis that's not the feelings missing me,
Speaker 3: But my partner has.
Speaker 9: Been saying to me through a year now, is it
Speaker 9: really strangely?
Speaker 3: Really every morning for a long time saying this is strange,
Speaker 3: Like you're waking up to.
Speaker 4: Any had stadium full of people that.
Speaker 3: Are watching her at remover awaiting on some form of
Speaker 3: inspiration or advice for their their dinner.
Speaker 1: When her team suggested Bell Gibson as a nominee, Bronwyn
Speaker 1: mccahn thought it was a no brainer.
Speaker 6: So in that social media category, it was a varied
Speaker 6: list of people in fitness and in fashion and beauty
Speaker 6: and health and whatever else, and they pitched this girl
Speaker 6: named Bell Gibson. Hadn't heard of her at that point,
Speaker 6: so they had done their you know, due diligence, going, oh,
Speaker 6: you know, and she's got you know, over two hundred
Speaker 6: thousand followers and it's an amazing story because she's got
Speaker 6: all of these cancers and rain tumors and she's done
Speaker 6: this app called The Whole Pantry and Apple are going
Speaker 6: to put it on their next release of iPhone or
Speaker 6: eyewatch or something, and I was like, wow, that's phenomenal,
Speaker 6: Like what a story that this woman who's going through
Speaker 6: so much, a mother of one and young, super young
Speaker 6: and going through all this medical stuff, even has the
Speaker 6: time or energy or anything to create this incredible app
Speaker 6: that is being picked up by Apple.
Speaker 1: Like this is unbelievable.
Speaker 6: So we were like, yeah, great, she sounds perfect to
Speaker 6: put in in the category under you know, health wellbeing.
Speaker 9: And that was that.
Speaker 1: But that was not that. An email pinged into journalists
Speaker 1: in boxes around the country at the exact same time,
Speaker 1: and it said.
Speaker 17: It has come to my attention that you have published
Speaker 17: a story about a girl I have known for my
Speaker 17: whole life. Her name is Belle Gibson, creator of the
Speaker 17: Whole Pantry app and book, and a so called terminal
Speaker 17: cancer patient. Unfortunately, there are a few things you might
Speaker 17: need to know before you consider publishing more about this woman.
Speaker 1: What that email went on to say would change everything.
Speaker 1: Next time on Extraordinary Stories.
Speaker 6: I can't remember the timeframe between the awards and when
Speaker 6: the next thing happened, but maybe It was a couple
Speaker 6: of months and the next thing, one of the girls
Speaker 6: in the office came in and said, oh my god,
Speaker 6: I've just received this email, anonymous, but basically from somebody
Speaker 6: who's saying that they went to school with Belle and
Speaker 6: that everything she's saying is a lie.
Speaker 1: Her age is a lie, she.
Speaker 6: Doesn't have cancer, she has no brain tumors, everything is
Speaker 6: a lie. And it had been sent to Cosmo and
Speaker 6: Cleo and like all the magazines, so everyone had got it,
Speaker 6: and I imagined it had also been sent to various
Speaker 6: journalists at newspapers because everyone had got the same email
Speaker 6: from this anonymous source. So we're like, God, a monthly
Speaker 6: magazine is not going to be the magazine that breaks
Speaker 6: a big story like this, because you've already got digital
Speaker 6: sides and news sites and everything that have already received
Speaker 6: this email.
Speaker 1: There was one newsroom with the time, resources and interest
Speaker 1: to pursue this tip off, and not even they could
Speaker 1: predict how Belle's empire of deception was about to une ravel.
Speaker 10: I think there is a bit of a pattern in
Speaker 10: people who want to lie to you that they tell
Speaker 10: you a partial truth and then then it just dovetails
Speaker 10: from there.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to this episode. Episodes two and
Speaker 1: three of Extraordinary Stories Bell Gibson are available exclusively to
Speaker 1: M plus members. To become a member and listen to
Speaker 1: them right now, click the link in the episode description
Speaker 1: or head to momamea dot com dot AU forward slash
Speaker 1: M plus. That's mp LUs. This episode of Extraordinary Stories
Speaker 1: was written and produced by me Emma Gillespie and Holly Waynwright.
Speaker 1: Audio production is by Eliza Ratliff and Madeline Joannu. The
Speaker 1: executive producers of Extraordinary Stories are Eliza Ratliffe and Holly Waynwright.
Speaker 1: The next episode of Extraordinary Stories will be released next week.
Speaker 1: If you don't want to wait, you can listen right
Speaker 1: now by following the link in the episode description or
Speaker 1: by heading to mammamea dot com dot a U forward
Speaker 1: slash M plus.
Speaker 2: Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land.
Speaker 1: We have recorded this podcast on the Gadigul people of
Speaker 1: the Or Nation.
Speaker 2: We pay our respects to their elders past and present,
Speaker 2: and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Rate
Speaker 2: islander cultures.