My 10-year battle with MANOREXIA
It’s not just women. Celebrity jeweller Stephen Webster reveals how, despite his gilded life, he was tortured by a fear of eating – and that his first taste of success triggered...
THE roll call of celebrity jeweller Stephen Webster’s fans reads like a Who’s Who of showbiz royalty. He designed a cocktail ring – and later a wedding band – for Madonna, and other devotees of his creations include supermodel Kate Moss, singer Christina Aguilera and actors Johnny Depp and Cameron Diaz.
Yet behind the awe-inspiring bling there has been a darker side to Stephen’s life, less publicised than the glorious gems, riotous launch parties and star clients.
For nearly a decade he fought a private battle with anorexia and depression, which he reveals in his autobiography, Goldstruck, published last week.
He has bravely gone public about his condition, and his story highlights that the eating disorder is not something only women suffer.
At his lowest point, Stephen, who is 5ft 10in tall, weighed only eight stone. His low body mass index (a weight-to-height ratio used by doctors) put him at risk of immune system problems, malnutrition, bone loss and other conditions.
Today the 56-year-old, who lives in London with Anastasia, a Russian beauty who is his second wife, and their daughter Nika, 16, is a healthy three stone heavier and feels his problems are consigned to the past.
He admits now that for many years, food – and not eating it – obsessed him.
‘It was mentally exhausting – meal times became a battle,’ he says. ‘I thought about food constantly. When a meal was on the horizon, my fretting built to a kind of crescendo, as in my head I was continually rehearsing scenarios and tricks for how to avoid it.
‘If I did eat, I felt as if I had let myself down. It felt as if I had given in to food.’
His diet was meagre. ‘I got into a daily routine that I could control – a plain roll with no butter and a pear in the morning, then some vegetables and a small portion of rice in the evening. It was pathetic really.’
Alongside this severe calorie restriction, he took up marathon running, which he says made him ‘feel good, in control’. He cut out meat and buried himself in work. ‘The strange thing was I never felt hungry,’ he says. ‘Even with foods I deemed safe, I wouldn’t let myself go. I was terrified that if I ate too many pears one day, I would end up eating Mars bars the next.’
STEPHEN grew up in a working-class family in Gravesend, Kent, with his younger brother David, now 54. He is also a jeweller and they work together. Their father Tom was a draughtsman and his mother Jean a housewife. It was a very happy and loving childhood, he says.
At 16, Stephen found his vocation studying jewellery design at Medway College of Design, later also attended by artist Tracey Emin, who would become a lifelong friend. He had no issues with food when he was growing up, and as a teenager was totally absorbed by his studies.
After completing an apprenticeship and working in the trade for £10 a day, at 21 he was offered what seemed to be an amazing opportunity – to work for a Canadian jeweller. But it was a move that triggered his health problems.
The job was based in the ski resort of Banff, and Stephen just didn’t fit in. ‘I was stuck up a freezing mountain, 5,000 miles away from home with 3,000 ski bums for company. I was desperately homesick and hated it.’
His misery turned rapidly to depression, triggering his eating disorder. ‘I felt that my life was heading in the wrong direction, and food was the one thing I could control. It was never a goal to be thin.’
He began skipping lunch, then cutting back further on food in general. ‘It progressed quite slowly. I did the shopping and all the cooking, so I could decide what we ate. One day my girlfriend Kathy, who’d moved to Canada with me, looked at me and said, “My God, you really are thin!”
‘I wasn’t really that aware of anorexia. I thought it was a problem for young girls.’
Despite being deeply unhappy, Stephen was determined not to admit defeat and stuck it out in Banff for three years. He now admits: ‘I was breaking down in tears every day.’
He sought help from a psychiatrist, who gave him counselling and