Two's The Mother Of All Cons is taking viewers back to the Believe in Magic scandal, the charity launched by Jean O'Brien and Megan Bhari that was built on lies about the teenager's illness. The three-part series, now airing, revisits how a story that won celebrity backing and even praise from a prime minister came undone.
That is why the name is being searched again today: the programme returns to a case that looked, for years, like a triumph of compassion and fundraising. Believe in Magic was set up in 2012, when Megan was 16, and was presented as a charity that would give seriously ill children and their families magical memories. It raised hundreds of thousands of pounds, drew support from One Direction, and even saw Harry Styles' mother join a 10-day trek to raise money.
The scale of the deception is part of what made the case so hard to untangle. Megan, a teenager from Surrey, rose to national prominence after claiming she was living with a brain tumour, a story carried through a blog that gained wide attention online. In 2015, David Cameron praised her at a Downing Street reception, calling her extraordinary. That same year, public appeals reportedly raised around £120,000 for specialist treatment in the United States.
Then came the collapse. Megan died in 2018 from a heart issue, not a brain tumour, and an inquest later found no evidence she had ever suffered from the illness that defined her public story. It also heard that she had fatty liver disease and had received treatment for an opioid addiction. The charity's central claim was false, but the picture was not simple: families who came through Believe in Magic have said they did receive genuine support, experiences and opportunities through it.
That contradiction is what gives the story its sting. Believe in Magic organised trips, celebrity meet-and-greets, family holidays and other once-in-a-lifetime events for children who were seriously ill, even as the narrative around Megan herself was untrue. Jamie Bartlett, whose reporting helped bring the case into sharper focus, described Megan as sick, but not of the thing she claimed, nor to the severity she claimed. The new series, linked here: The Mother Of All Cons revisits the Believe in Magic scandal, puts that uneasy truth back in front of a wider audience.
What comes next is simple enough: the series will be watched not just for the scale of the fraud, but for the unanswered question at the centre of it all — how a false illness story managed to carry so much public trust for so long.
