Breakfast with Bristol24/7: Ciara Hillyer

Vlogger Ciara Hillyer is building a worldwide following with her YouTube videos. Martin Booth meets her for waffles.

Ciara Hillyer is on the phone when I walk into Primrose Café. She has bagged a prime corner table overlooking Reg the Veg the other side of Boyces Avenue in the heart of Clifton Village. As I take a seat opposite her, I realise that she is conducting her first media interview of the day and is live on BBC Radio Bristol.

She is talking about disabled parking as she has had previous experience of her blue badge being stolen, not that you would know looking at Ciara (pronounced like Keira Knightley) that she is disabled. But every morning, her day starts by being hooked up to a nebuliser, followed by a “massive cocktail of tablets”. 

She also keeps a wheelchair in her car if her cystic fibrosis (CF) is particularly severe, as her symptoms can change from day to day.

Explaining a bit more about her condition, which also encompasses diabetes as well as being deaf in one year due to long-term use of antibiotics and infections, was the theme of her very first YouTube video:

Published at the beginning of this year, it is no exaggeration to say that is has changed Ciara’s life.

A bubbly presence opposite me in the cafe which she chose because of its cosines, despite her living in Frampton Cotterell with her mum, younger brother and two dogs, she is exactly the same as the person in the videos which since the first one 

Making the first video was one of her ways of coping after a close friend of hers died from CF. “I didn’t really expect anything of it,” Ciara explains after I return from ordering our breakfast at the counter.

“I thought that I would put the video up on Facebook and then my mum, a few of my family and some of my friends would watch it. But it kind of exploded within 24 hours.”

The response was “overwhelming” from her first video – still her most viewed – which encouraged her to make more. “I like to keep them visual and fun to watch. I love it. I think I’ve done more in the last year than I’ve ever done in my entire life. I’m getting out more because I’m doing a lot more with my videoing. It’s given me a lot more confidence.”

Our food arrives and Ciara’s eyes light up at the size of her plate piled high with waffles with bananas and hot chocolate sauce: “I’m so excited for this – it looks nice. What a breakfast!”

Since the start in March, Ciara’s videos have continued to raise awareness of CF but have also turned into following Ciara on various adventures like going down St Vincent’s Rocks overlooking the Avon Gorge, being a tourist in Brussels and taking part in the recent Colour Run at Oldbury Court.

CF, however, remains a constant in her videos, including one in which we are with her in her car as she takes a blood reading before driving.

People watching the videos have got in touch, including those with the condition and in the week that we spoke the father of a baby born with CF who said that her vlogs have given him a refreshing insight into what CF is like.

Ciara went to the Ridings’ School in Winterbourne and lived at home while studying a photography degree at UWE. Because of her unpredictable health, she cannot work at the moment so she keeps herself motivated by making the YouTube videos as and when she can. 

It’s her dream to get into the media industry – something that Bristol24/7 will be helping her achieve as our new freelance video reporter – and her videos solve the dual purpose of raising awareness of CF and about the lack of disabled people in the media, especially with disabilities such as her own.

Illustration by Anna Higgie – www.annahiggie.co.uk

Watch Ciara’s first video report for Bristol24/7: Choral Evensong at Bristol Cathedral in hi-vis