Champagne flowed and sequins sparkled as Australia’s culinary and literary elites gathered for the book launch of the year in October 2014.
Beaming in a white dress was Belle Gibson, a ‘cancer survivor’ whose new cookbook, The Whole Pantry, had been hailed as a ‘remarkable journey of hope and healing through food’. Remarkable indeed. Because, as the world now knows, it was all a lie.
The astonishing ‘true-ish’ story of the then 23-year-old influencer who faked having brain cancer to launch a multimillion-pound ‘wellness’ empire is now the subject of a hit Netflix series, Apple Cider Vinegar.
The drama has shone a new light on a sickening controversy that saw the Tasmanian mother-of-one build a vast social-media following, a hugely successful app and a bestselling book in just three years, only for the house of cards to collapse after her lies were discovered in 2015.
A decade later, however, questions are still swirling about the role of Gibson’s publisher, Penguin Random House, in the farrago.
While Gibson’s real-life book launch is unlikely to have been as glamorous as its Netflix recreation, there is no doubt that the company’s executives pandered to their rising young star.
This week, the Mail spoke to industry sources who say they remain ‘baffled’ that the publishing giant was apparently blindsided by the fraudster, whom it seemed to promote without undertaking even the most basic fact-checks.
Kaitlyn Dever plays Belle Gibson, an influencer who faked having brain cancer to launch a multi-million-pound ‘wellness’ empire
And yet perhaps Penguin wasn’t so blindsided after all. For the Mail has learnt of internal documents that show staff from the publishing house had raised concerns about Belle’s story long before her book launch – and even hired a ‘crisis’ PR firm in case she was ever accused of lying about ‘part or all of her story’.
It all raises the question: how much could Penguin have known? And when?
To get our heads round this bizarre case, we must go back to 2012 when Gibson launched her Instagram account @healing_belle. Her pictures showed a smiling 20-year-old with long, glossy hair who claimed she had been diagnosed with a brain tumour three years earlier and given just four months to live – but instead had ‘cured’ herself through healthy eating, positive thinking and alternative medicine.
Her ‘miraculous’ story resonated with so many people that she amassed 250,000 followers in less than a year.
A partnership with Apple followed in 2013 when Gibson launched The Whole Pantry, one of the first ‘health and wellness’ apps available on the Apple Watch.
But it was her lucrative book deal with Penguin imprint Lantern – headed by veteran publisher Julie Gibbs – that became so central to her success.
While Apple Cider Vinegar – which is Netflix’s ninth most-popular show globally – stresses that ‘some names have been changed’, the streaming giant makes no effort to disguise Gibbs’s identity. The character, played by Australian actress Catherine McClements, is referred to by her real name throughout.
Before the real-life controversy erupted ten years ago, Gibbs was considered a superstar in the world of Australian publishing. She was just 31 when she published The Cook’s Companion by Stephanie Alexander in 1996, which sold more than half a million copies.
‘Julie was a legend within Penguin,’ a publishing source tells me. ‘People feared and revered her in equal measure.’
Given her worldliness and sophistication, it does seem unlikely that Gibbs could have been taken in by such a young, and inexperienced fraudster.
As one source who worked with the publishing firm in the US told me: ‘It is baffling that they didn’t do even the most rudimentary checks into Belle’s background. Who were her doctors? Where were her medical records?
‘It beggars belief that they would not do that. Which leads you to ask – were they so fixated on making money that they turned a blind eye to the “facts” in front of them?’
Internal Penguin documents suggest there were warning signs about the inspirational young influencer long before her book The Whole Pantry was published
The Netflix series does show Gibbs and other publishing figures questioning Belle’s authenticity. In one scene, Gibson (played by Kaitlyn Dever) cooks a vegan peach tart which she claims her grandmother used to bake from scratch when she was a child. Sipping a glass of wine, ‘Gibbs’ coolly responds that the city where Belle’s grandmother lived is ‘too cold in the winter to grow peaches’.
In another, Gibson’s character sobs about losing a baby – as her real-life alter ego did in 2012 – to which Gibbs replies: ‘I also lost a child. I lost one child and I threw myself into another [work].’ Belle’s character echoes this quote at the book launch and claims it as her own.
Internal Penguin documents, shown to the Australian Federal Court as part of a civil lawsuit against Gibson in 2016, suggest there were warning signs about the inspirational young influencer long before The Whole Pantry was published. Warning signs that were, clearly, ignored.
The first came early in 2014 when Penguin paid AU$15,000 (£7,000) for a home economist to help Gibson develop original recipes for her book after discovering she was, at best, a mediocre cook.
One source told the Mail: ‘You’d think that alone would have raised red flags. Most cookery authors are excellent cooks. Isn’t that the point?’
Yet, still, the publishing giant pressed on. In May 2014 – five months before the book launch – a senior editor emailed Gibbs with concerns about Gibson’s draft, which included information about the influencer’s personal story, working life and medical history.
‘Julie – I think the main thing to warn Belle about is that there are a few “gaps” which journalists might probe,’ the email cautioned. What exact action was taken, the Mail could not verify.
But, in the run-up to The Whole Pantry’s release that October, an unnamed member of Penguin staff was charged with preparing Gibson for media interviews and recorded 90 minutes of footage of their exchange.
They began by telling her: ‘We want to rehearse some questions with you. Because what we suspect might happen now is that, because you are the success story of the moment… you know what journalists do, they want to start scratch, scratch, scratching away.’
‘They already are,’ Gibson laughed. ‘Exactly,’ the employee replied bluntly. ‘And we’re concerned about that.’
Over the next hour and a half, Gibson stumbled over a series of basic questions, including one about her real age and another about the name of her doctor.
The most excruciating moment, however, came when she was asked about her most recent treatment. At this point, Gibson visibly grimaced and stammered: ‘I don’t know how I want to talk about this.’
She went on to refer to a ‘German medical protocol’, claiming: ‘Every single doctor and practitioner that knows about it or doesn’t know about it, all of them are seeing results.’
Pressed on what the treatment was, she grimaced again and admitted: ‘I might have to do some reading on this.’
After a pause, she added: ‘It’s a machine that is like an electronic pulse pushes into the cells and I take medicine when that machine is operating.’ Asked how she gets the treatment if it’s not available in Australia, she claimed: ‘I’m just lucky.’
By the time the book was slated for release, questions over Gibson’s credibility had clearly reached crisis point.
The court documents show that Gibbs had personally raised concerns after Gibson told her that a jealous friend had ‘turned on her’ – leaving the publisher to suspect her soon-to-be star author ‘had fabricated part or all of her illness’.
Just one week after The Whole Pantry was launched, Penguin executives were sufficiently worried that they drafted in a PR firm to prepare a ‘contingency’ plan in case such a scandal ever broke.
And break it certainly did. An explosive investigation by Australian newspaper The Age published five months after Gibson’s book launch revealed that she had lied about having cancer and had failed to donate funds she’d claimed she was raising for charity to the relevant beneficiaries. ‘Penguin overlooked a lot of warnings because Belle had so many followers on social media and her book promised to be a global bestseller,’ a source told me.
Gibson was fined AU$410,000 for deception and failing to donate any of the funds she had raised for four charitable causes
‘They were gearing up huge publicity campaigns in America and Britain. Thousands of books had been printed in the UK and US – but they were all pulped.’
Court documents show Penguin was advised to ‘get on the front foot’ when the controversy erupted in 2015 by dropping Gibson and immediately withdrawing her book from circulation. ‘You may still get questions about how much Penguin knew in advance (which you can decline to respond to),’ PR advisers warned in internal emails.
‘Belle may even face criminal charges, so the quicker Penguin is distanced from her, the better.’
Less than a year after the launch, the publisher destroyed around 50,000 copies of the book in Australia and an unknown number in the UK and US.
In 2016, Gibson was fined AU$410,000 (£200,000) for deception and failing to donate any of the funds she had raised for four charitable causes – including for the family of Joshua Schwarz, a boy with stage four brain cancer who died at the age of nine just a year later. Almost a decade on, the fraudster is yet to pay a penny.
Penguin, too, was fined AU$30,000 (£15,000) for its role in the deception as part of a civil lawsuit brought by Australia’s consumer watchdog.
Some observers pity the publishing house for embroiling itself in such a scandal.
‘No one would ever have questioned whether Belle was lying about her cancer,’ one well-known author tells me. ‘What rational person would think someone would lie about something as awful as that?
‘I’ve worked in the cookery publishing side of things. Before Belle Gibson, the biggest fear was that authors were plagiarising recipes. I totally believe that Julie Gibbs and Penguin were taken in.’ Gibbs left Penguin in 2015, shortly after The Age’s expose.
‘We published Belle’s recipe book in good faith,’ she said at the time.
The Netflix show recreates Gibson’s interview with Australia’s 60 Minutes programme in 2015
‘In discussions with Belle in the course of publishing the book, she always spoke clearly about her medical background. It was not something we felt we needed to verify given that the book’s content focuses on the recipes.’
Now 60, Gibbs is a freelance publisher. Her glossy Instagram page is filled with photos of her smiling alongside stars such as Nigella Lawson and novelist Marian Keyes.
All mention of Gibson’s book has been scrubbed from her social media, except for one 2014 picture that shows a copy among a stack of other publications Gibbs has worked on.
Approached by the Mail this week, Gibbs told us she was ‘unable to comment on any of this due to binding confidentiality clauses with Penguin Random House’.
Cryptically, she added: ‘All I can say is that the TV series is not an accurate representation of events. I wish I could [say more].’
Meanwhile, Penguin, which in 2015 vehemently denied knowing Gibson was a fraudster, saying that it had published her book ‘in good faith’, is keeping shtum.
Approached last night, the publishing house declined to comment further.
Much as Penguin might like the story to go away, as the success of Apple Cider Vinegar shows, the appetite for Belle Gibson’s story remains insatiable.
Dog-eared copies of The Whole Pantry are selling for as much as £400 on eBay, while TikTok videos of users salivating over her banned recipes have racked up thousands of views.
Gibson now reportedly works at a grocery store in Melbourne under a new name. Quite what she makes of the six-part Netflix show is unknown.
While the Mail has tried to contact her for comment, she has refused to say a word since the show was released last month.
It’s a saga that continues to leave a bitter taste among the genuine cancer survivors whose illnesses she baked into a profit.
