The 14 most revealing moments from Belle Gibson's 60 Minutes interview.

Belle’s wild ride keeps getting weirder…

Belle Gibson, author of bestselling book The Whole Pantry and creator of the health and wellness app of the same name, was exposed earlier this year as having falsely portrayed herself as suffering from cancer.

Claiming she had miraculously survived her terminal brain cancer by following the diet advocated in her book and app The Whole Pantry, Gibson was forced to reveal the truth about her alleged ‘misdiagnosis‘ following an investigation into her failure to donate $300,000 in profits from her app to charity as promised.

Her health food empire quickly unravelled, with her cookbook pulled from shelves and The Whole Pantry app discreetly removed from the Apple App store, despite its proposed inclusion as one of only a handful of apps inbuilt into the Apple Watch.

Last night, Belle Gibson was interviewed by 60 Minutes’ Tara Brown.

Even for viewers who had been following the story for some time, the interview was stunning and plumbed the depths of Gibson’s deception.

Here’s our pick for the most revealing moments:

1.When Belle commits to telling the truth.

Tara Brown starts the interview by saying: “Every time she speaks, there’s every chance she’s lying”, so she asks Belle whether she’s prepared to sign a stat dec.

Belle says she is. “There’s nothing left to lose. If that requires a stat dec, I’m comfortable with that”.

She tells Tara, “I’ve been really transparent.”

And then: “I didn’t trade in my story or in other people lives.”

Later in the episode she explains why she decided to do the interview: “Tara, I have lost everything. I’m not here to regain it. When you hit rock bottom there is only an opportunity to be honest and heal and apologise. I’m here to do that.”

2. When she said she was sorry.

One of the defining features of Gibson’s previous public statements has been the lack of an apology. She did say sorry last night: “I am really sorry. It hurts me and I beat myself up. For all those I’ve hurt who mean a lot to me”.

Though when asked why she asked her fans to send her flowers after hearing that she had secondary cancers, she said, “I don’t recall any of that”.

3. When Belle admitted she had not been diagnosed by a real doctor – or with any medical tests.

Belle told Tara that after having a stroke at work, she was diagnosed with a brain cancer by a man named “Mark Johns” who told her she had between six weeks and four months to live. “Johns” apparently told Belle he was a neurologist and immunologist. Tara noted that 60 Minutes have not been able to find any record of this man.

Belle told Tara that “Mark Johns did “a series of tests at her home with a box. A machine. With lights on the front.” She said it was “German technology” that “measures what I believe to be frequencies.”

Tara pointed out that she had written in her book that she had received this information in a medical office – and Belle admitted that was not true: “I thought being open…would not be understood. And that people would be disappointed and angry for me.”

Belle said, “I believed him to be a real doctor”.

4. When she said that she thought she was having “radio and chemotherapy”

“I believed I was having radio therapy. When [“Johns”] gave me medication, I was told it was oral chemotherapy and I believed it”.

In her books and online, Belle has said that she stopped “conventional” treatment due to the side effects, but she told Tara Brown a different story.

She said that she stopped “conventional treatment” because she fell pregnant: “Very soon after I started the treatment, I fell pregnant. That was a huge catalyst for me.”

When challenged, Belle said, “I stopped the chemotherapy for various reasons.” When challenged again, she said, “I am being honest.”

5. When she admitted to lying about other illnesses since her teens.

In her late teens, Belle told a skateboarding forum that she had three surgeries for a heart condition and died twice on the operating table.

In response she said: “I still have the heart condition. I was supposed to have surgery for that.”

Her explanation for those lies was that she says she was experiencing abuse and was being stalked by someone close to her family.

She also said: “I think that when you’re young…you are melodramatic”.

6. When she revealed that she did have a brain scan at one stage, but…

Belle was a little hazy about why she didn’t ask questions about her health, particularly when she didn’t actually die after four months. She said, “I know the question is, why did I not get a brain scan”.

She says that she actually went to the Alfred Hospital and got a brain scan but “Mark Johns” had the scan sent to him. She says he showed her a scan and that scan revealed a tumour. She now believes that scan was not hers.

“He brought in scans and it showed a brain tumour. But it wasn’t my scan. But most recently I went back and got back to the Alfred and got my scans and I didn’t have a brain tumour”.

She couldn’t produce that scan for 60 Minutes and said that she hadn’t been asked for it.

7. When Tara reveals that medical records show she saw a neuologist in 2011 – and he told her she did not have cancer.

Actual medical records obtained by 60 Minutes are damning. It turns out that Belle did have a brain scan but she went for it because she was convinced that she had Multiple Sclerosis.

The scan revealed she didn’t have MS and there was no sign of a brain tumour.

This information was conveyed to her in a 40 minute face-to-face interview with a neurologist in 2011. The neurologist told her that she did not have brain cancer.

This was two years before she started her Instagram community, before the Whole Pantry app and before she wrote her book.

8. When she says she does not have mental illness

When asked whether she has mental illness, Belle said, “no. I don’t accept that.”

She also said, “I don’t feel that I do have Munchausen’s”, because she did not cause herself actual physical pain in order to back up her lies.

Belle does also not accept she is a pathological liar.

9. When she tells Tara the definition of “truth”

“Speaking with honesty and…with…clear definition around fact”. A lie is “the opposite of that”.

Belle said, “I’ve not been intentionally untruthful. I’ve been openly conveying what was my reality”.

“It just doesn’t match your normal or your reality”.

10. When she is unable to say how old she is.

In perhaps the strangest part of the interview, Belle cannot decide how old she is. She says:

“I’ve been raised as being currently a 26 year old”.

“I live knowing as I have always known that I am 26.”

“I believe that I am 26.”

“I have two birth certificates. I have changed my name four times.”

“I’ll need to keep digging.”

But when Tara says that according to her most recent deed poll documentation, Belle is 23, Belle says: “Correct.”

11. When she says that she still plans to follow through on her charity donations.

She says that she “took my books and my finances and my accounting to business managers. Eight months on its still not finalised”.

But the money is still coming: “I still stand by those promises.”

12. When she reluctantly admits that she might have made people sicker.

While she says, “I was not an expert in anyone else’s health” she does eventually concede that people might have relied on her advice: “I never intended [to drive people away from conventional medicine]. I accept that might have happened.

13. She was going to tell the truth – but the media beat her to it.

“I’ve been going through this since last year. Since months before the media broke it…Once I was strong enough, I was going to come forward. That date was only 10 days before the media broke it.

14. When she says that she felt “grief” on finding out she didn’t have cancer.

“I was feeling a huge amount of grief…I felt like I had been taken for a ride.”

Read more: 

Did Belle Gibson’s ‘tell-all interview’ contain yet another lie?

This fraud trial is the one Belle Gibson should have had.

Belle Gibson says she’s lost everything. But she’s not the victim here.