Gibson took in over $1million in profits from her cookbook and wellness app, The Whole Pantry – previously due to be one of the Apple Watch‘s first apps officially endorsed by iTunes. It has since been removed from the app store, but is still available for purchase for US$2.99 on Android’s app store, Google Play.
In April, Gibson claimed that her troubled childhood, and forced independence from an early age, contributed to her eventual public downfall.
“I was walking to school on my own, making school lunches and cleaning the house every day… It was my responsibility to do grocery shopping, do the washing, arrange medical appointments and pick up my brother. I didn’t have any toys.”
On Sunday, an extensive interview between ’60 Minutes’ journalist Tara Brown and Belle Gibson will air; social media criticism of Nine’s decision to explore Gibson’s story further, however, has flowed in thick and fast, following a preview posted to the show’s Facebook page on late Wednesday evening.
“I am totally incensed that 60 minutes is giving this charlatan’s story oxygen,” one said. “I am so disgusted in this,” said another, among hundreds more.
The Daily Telegraph today reports that Belle Gibson was allegedly paid $45,000 to partake in the interview – a claim that has added even more fuel to the haters’ fire, resulting in a full-blown inferno online. Some viewers have urged Belle Gibson and ’60 Minutes’ to either pull the interview altogether, or donate the payment to charity.
In a fairly chilling preview for Sunday’s interview, Tara Brown bluntly asks Gibson, “Do you accept that you are a pathological liar?”
Channel Nine claims the interview will add new evidence to the extent of Gibson’s lies, saying that her claims of “believing she was dying” were illegitimate.
“Until this day, Belle claims unscrupulous natural therapists duped her into believing she was dying, but this Sunday 60 Minutes will reveal the proof that this is a lie too – Belle Gibson is not a victim. She is a fraud.”
Whether ’60 Minutes’ will concede and pull the interview, or if Belle Gibson was paid tens of thousands for her first TV interview is, at this point, unknown. What we do know for certain? Tara Brown being sick to bloody death of it all.
Via The Guardian.
