When Belle Gibson’s web of public and dangerous lies was exposed in March this year, the Melbourne wellness blogger made international headlines. As is the way of the news cycle, the story had since fizzled out somewhat until last week when it was revealed 60 Minutes would be televising a tell-all interview to finally get some answers from the young woman who deceived the world.
Last night that interview aired to 1.073 million metro viewers, not one of whom really came away with any answers at all. In fact, the awkward and cringe-worthy interview left us with even more questions than we had before.
Despite outrage over the alleged $45,000 Gibson was paid for the interview (a Change.org petition for her to donate the reported money paid to cancer research has been signed 9,527 times at the time of publishing), Tara Brown has been praised by viewers for her relentless, unsympathetic line of questioning.
As Brown grilled Gibson, there was a chilling lack of remorse on Gibson’s part as she continued to claim she believed she had cancer until earlier this year.
In case you missed the interview last night, here are some of the most confounding quotes.
On her web of lies: “I’ve not been intentionally untruthful,” Gibson claimed. “I’ve been completely open when speaking about what was my reality and what is my reality now. It doesn’t match your normal or your reality.”
Gibon went on to insist that she had planned to tell her followers the truth once we was, “strong enough”, but that the media got to her first.
“No” was all Gibson had in response to Brown’s question, “Do you accept that you’re a pathological liar?”
On her ‘misdiagnosis’: Gibson has, since being exposed, claimed a German alternative medicine practitioner — a man named Mark Johns for whom nobody can find a record of — misdiagnosed her in 2009.
“He went to my home and did a series of tests. There was a box, a machine, with lights on the front, and that machine was apparently German technology. There’s two metal pads, one that goes below the chair and one that goes behind your back, and then that measures what I believe to be frequencies and then he said to me that I had stage four brain tumour and that I had four months to live.”
When an unrelenting Brown revealed medical records that showed she had seen a neurologist at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne in 2011 and was told she did not have brain cancer, Gibson went on to claim these scans we sent directly to Mark Johns who showed her a scan with brain cancer, rather than her own.
Her medical records from the hospital state otherwise and, in fact, specify she had a 40 minute consultation with a neurologist who told her the scans were clear. This scan took place a full two years before she started to build her Whole Pantry empire on Instagram.
On her treatment: “I believed I was having radio therapy. When [“Dr Mark Johns”] gave me medication, I was told it was oral chemotherapy and I believed it.”
On her age: A recent deed poll certificate shows Gibson is 23, but when pushed on the issue she oddly claimed, “I’ve always been raised as being currently a 26-year-old,”
Brown responded with the (what should be) simple question, “How old are you?” to which she replied, “Well I live, knowing as I’ve always known, that I would be 26.”
An unrelenting Brown said, “Okay Belle, this is a really, really simple question – how old are you?” before Gibson eventually claimed an ‘identity crisis saying, “it’s probably a question that we’ll have to keep digging for.”
Riiiiiight. Watch her bizarre response below: