‘I was secretly having a nervous breakdown’
Online fame and rave Edinburgh Festival reviews drove comedian Bella Younger to become the person she was mocking
When the Edinburgh Festival begins this month, I will not be there. To some, that might seem strange considering that, for the last two years, I’ve performed to packed crowds and received rave reviews. Instead, I will be watching fellow comedians from afar, secretly glad that I’m not on that stage.
To understand why, I need to take you back to March 2016. At that time, I was riding high. My Edinburgh appearance in 2015 had been a hit and my 20,000 Instagram followers had just bagged me the holy grail: a book deal. I was going to Andalusia with a group of friends to celebrate, before knuckling down to write the script for my next Edinburgh show that coming August.
Outwardly, I was a viral comic internet sensation, high on “likes”. Yet, in reality, I was about to have my first nervous breakdown and had no idea how I would get through the next few days, let alone another sell-out festival run.
I had started my Instagram, Deliciously Stella, in May 2015. My aim? To poke fun at the obsession with “clean eating” and subvert the endless number of selfies being taken in the gym, showing impossibly toned people in equally impossible poses.
So I posted a photo of the trendy brunch du jour: avocado ado on toast. Except I had made it using Haribo fried egg sweets on top of supermarkett guacamole. It got a huge response, so I started turning pictures of myself upside down in place of gravity-defying yoga moves. I would boast about my six-pack – then strap half a dozen cans of beer to my stomach. All the while, I used the #JuiceCleanse and #GetTheGlow hashtags beloved by the wellness bloggers I mocked. Within a month I had gone viral. I was gaining hundreds of followers every day and posted regular jokes in the guise of my alter ego, Deliciously Stella.
Making people laugh was all I had ever wanted and at first the validation was amazing. I started appearing in magazines and newspapers. People wanted to know who I was. Did I really drink alcopops for breakfast? Was I actually repulsed by kale?
I spent a year posting on Instagram every day. Thinking up new jokes was fun and I was even approached by a publisher. It felt like my longedfor career as a comedian was finally falling into place. But the more followers I gained – by then in the tens of thousands – the more pressure I felt. Did everyone really think I was this beer-swilling, deep-fat-frying oaf?
By the time of that Spanish holiday, the panic was setting in. I was anxious all the time. My behaviour became erratic – I found myself applying fake tan to just one toe without remembering why or how.
After just two days of what was supposed to be well-deserved downtime, I decided to fly back to my parents’ near Edinburgh. I cried all the way to the airport, desperately hunting for a picture to upload. Once through security, I collapsed in hysterical tears, calling my best friend to tell her that I didn’t know where I was, before being escorted on to my plane. I arrived in Scotland in a mini skirt and a bikini. It was October.
I couldn’t believe things had reached this point. I had started Deliciously Stella to make fun of people who lived through a filter. Yet here I was, panicking about when I would next be able to post and how many comments I had. Looking back, it seems ridiculous, but at the time I was truly convinced that neglecting social media for just one day would cause everything I’d worked for to disappear. I had become the very thing I had set out to mock.
My parents – mum Sally and dad Charlie – were supportive but had no idea how bad it really was. I tried to hide my feelings so they wouldn’t worry, and mistakenly believed that everything would sort itself out.
When the truth became apparent, they were horrified and encouraged me to seek professional help. I was diagnosed as bipolar and given my first round of anti-psychotic medication. I lived with my parents over the next few months, climbing to 100,000 Instagram followers, writing my book and preparing for Edinburgh. They hadn’t expected me back after university – I had given up my bedroom to my brother – and living together was hard. I oscillated between wild anxiety, total silence, and Deliciously Stella, overloading their kitchen with junk food. At times my mum was a professional “Instagram mum”, hovering over me to take the perfect picture. At others, she was more like a nurse.
None of my friends knew what was happening – I told them that I had moved back home to write my book. I have always been a bit of a party girl and it was hard to explain why their formerly rambunctious pal had suddenly become a wallflower.
By June, I had finally had enough. I hadn’t slept for six days. I was suffering daily panic attacks. My bones ached, my skin prickled and I developed acute tinnitus, which drove me to distraction. I was afraid to set foot outside my bed, lest the floorboards should cause me to collapse and die. I called my psychiatrist and begged him for sleeping pills. “I have to get better before Edinburgh,” I cried. I couldn’t bear to let anybody down. Instead, I was referred to an inpatient facility at private hospital The Priory. For the first three days I didn’t leave my room and grew accustomed to being institutionalised. The set meal and bedtimes reminded me of boarding school, and we even called the pill dispensing room the “tuck shop”.
Yet the threat of my impending month of live shows still loomed. I started bunking off therapy to learn my script. Doctors pleaded with me to stop working, but I couldn’t quit. I took pictures of my hospital meals and begged my dad to smuggle in biscuits so I could make jokes on Instagram. I stayed for a month, taking day leave towards the end to do podcasts and previews. Nobody had any idea that I couldn’t hang around for an after-show drink because I had to be back in hospital.
My Edinburgh 2016 run was performed under a medicated fog. Somehow I scraped through with good reviews, but my parents said they didn’t see me smile once. My sister said it felt as though I wasn’t there at all.
In January this year, I moved on to antidepressants and slowly started to get better. The healthier I felt, the less I felt the urge to post – until I finally reached a point where I only used it when I wanted to.
Never again will I give in to the pressure to post on social media every day. But I am looking forward to continuing with Deliciously Stella. After all, my 141,000 followers still want to see me covered in cans of beer and chocolate bars – and who I am to deny them?
Did I really drink alcopops for breakfast and was I actually repulsed by kale?