Britain’s Got Talent champion Sydnie Christmas has revealed how she struggled for years with a mystery condition that left her in agony and on antidepressants. The 29-year-old singer, who won the ITV contest in June and has just released her first album, began suffering from crippling tummy ache when she was 19, saying: “The pain was hideous.” As she tried to carve out a career as a performer, Sydnie says the problems often left her bed-bound.
“I got a lot of intense stomach pains,” she recalls. “The bloat was awful. It knocked me out.
I would wake up feeling violently sick. It affected my toilet habits and I would often be in bed for the day.” Her weight began to yo-yo too.
“I would put on 6lb, lose it, then put it back on,” she says. Before BGT, Sydnie appeared in the E4 programme Stage School and starred in shows on cruise ships, but her health began to affect her career. “I wouldn’t fit in my costumes.
My face would swell up. I looked like I had something wrong.” Sydnie suffered from anxiety and depression too.
“Mentally I was in a bad way – very temperamental with a sort of mind fog. I would feel miserable.” In 2018 she went vegan for six months, but that only made matters worse leaving her with no energy and she admits: “I was living off pasta.
” But she shrugged off her symptoms and carried on. “My body was trying to cope, but I thought it was normal, I was used to it,” she admits. It wasn’t until 2021 that a GP put forward the id.