B*Witched star Edele Lynch opened up on toxic trolls who said they’d rather die than have her lips.
She insisted she feels sorry for vacuous cyberbullies
Edele, 43, told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “The trolling is so shallow and usually about how you look.”
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She recalled: “One tweet said ‘if my lips were as small as Edele Lynch I’d kill myself’.
“I was like well that’s a super introspection of how your life is if you’re worried about the size of lips.
“I feel sorry for the trolls.”
Edele and her twin sister Keavy, Lindsay Armaou and Sinead O’Carroll formed as B*Witched in 1997 releasing two albums and eight singles.
‘C’est la Vie’, ‘Rollercoaster’, ‘To You I Belong’, and ‘Blame it on the Weatherman’ hit number one in the UK.
Being dramatically dropped by Sony in 2002 after selling over three million albums worldwide was a devastating blow.
The foursome reformed in 2012 on the ITV pop reality TV show The Big Reunion.
Last year they toured with British pop sensations Blue and last March released new single ‘Birthday’, 25 years after their debut hit, C’est la Vie.
The Dublin singer lives in the UK and is mum to 15-year old Ceol, Harley, 13 and 11-year old Enya.
After her marriage of eight years to the their father Michael Barrett ended in 2014, Edele had a breakdown and self harmed, pulling out her hair and punching her head against the wall to cope.
Nine years on she uses yoga therapy to prevent her from “drowning again”.
She told us: “I’ve got a yoga therapist I work with now, Colin Dunsmuir, I found him five years ago.”
She added: “I do yoga for an hour every morning and a half an hour every evening.
“I learned about a massive journey in my childhood that I’d completely emotionally blocked out.”
Trauma was trapped in the lead singer’s hip flexors which had given her trouble for years.
She continued: “The moment I actually hit the nail on the head with what was really going on for me, my hip flexors fixed themselves, and I could release and let go.
“It was all in my mind.
Edele continued: “All my troubles have made me a stronger person, you can’t drown in your struggles.
“You’ve got to find a way of fighting through them and get on top of it.
“Otherwise you’re going to be drowning for the rest of your life.
“I’ve got my three children and I want to enjoy them to the greatest degree.
“I had to go on this journey for all of us, I recognised I couldn’t give them all the love I could at one point.”
Opening up on her marriage breakdown, she said: “I had these dreams for my family and it all came tumbling down.”
Through yoga therapy she has let go of the past: “I can’t even remember being married to him to be honest, that’s all well gone.”
Happily single, Edele revealed: “Nobody’s ever stuck. The next person I meet I want to walk alongside them.
“I don’t need to fall head over heels and hang everything on that person.
“I’ve only dated two people since Michael and six months was the longest.”
Finding fame at 17 straight out of school meant the girls had to mind themselves.
She said: “We didn’t know what it meant to take care of ourselves.
“That’s your parents’ job, but we’d moved out into the big bad world of work, we never had those pills to deal with it.”
Friends started acting differently towards her when she became famous.
She explained: “The first time we were on Top of the Pops, once I went back home, people who I was always friends with
just suddenly didn’t know how to speak to me anymore.”
After their first single C’est La Vie went to number one, the pressure was enormous to stay there.
Supporting NSYNC and Britney Spears in 1999, Blame it on the Weatherman was announced as number one.
Edele recalled NSYNC’s excitement: “They’d written all over these chalkboards that Weatherman was number One in England and they were pulling all these party poppers and we were like, ‘brilliant, thanks’.
“They were like, ‘are you not freaking out?’ and we were like ‘no we feel we can breathe again now that the pressure is off’. It’s a bit sad really.” America was gruelling and all they got to see was the inside of a Marriott hotel.
Edele recalled being miserable during a gig due to exhaustion after flying through the night on a Concorde.
She recalled: “I went on stage and didn’t enjoy the gig at all.
“I think I said to the audience thanks for being the worst audience ever, as they were so unresponsive.
“I got on the phone to my manager and was like ‘don’t ever do that again’.” Now back together on their own terms B*witched are gearing up to play the Kaleidoscope Festival, Russborough House, Blessington, Co Wicklow.
Quizzed on regrets she said: “I was always in bed early, and never went to any parties.
“I’d probably tell myself to take it slightly less seriously and have a little bit more fun.”
