Two is revisiting the Believe In Magic charity scandal in a new three-part series that puts Jean O'Brien and her daughter, Megan Bhari, back at the centre of one of the strangest deception cases in recent memory. The Mother of All Cons returns to a story that once drew celebrity backing, public praise and a sense of goodwill around a charity that promised magic to seriously ill children and their families.
That goodwill was real enough to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds. Believe In Magic organised trips, celebrity meet-and-greets, family holidays and once-in-a-lifetime events, and families who used it have said they did receive genuine support and experiences. The charity was launched in 2012, when Bhari was 16, and it quickly became the kind of cause that powerful people wanted to be seen supporting.
One Direction backed the charity. Harry Styles' mother even took part in a 10-day trek to raise money for it. In 2015, then-prime minister David Cameron singled out Bhari at a Downing Street reception and called her extraordinary, a moment that helped cement the charity's public image at the time. Supporters were also told that year that Bhari urgently needed specialist treatment in the United States, a claim that deepened sympathy and widened the circle of donors.
The story later fell apart in the harshest possible way. An inquest found there was no evidence Bhari had ever suffered from the brain tumour that sat at the heart of her public story. She died in 2018 from a heart issue, not the illness that had been presented to supporters, and the charity was eventually described as being based on lies. That contradiction is what makes the case linger: the people behind Believe In Magic did provide trips and treats to families who needed them, even as the core narrative used to win trust was false.
That mix of real benefit and falsehood is why the case still cuts through. Parents later questioned the diagnosis after details did not match their own experience caring for children with the same condition, and the charity's celebrity gloss made those doubts harder to raise at the time. The new series is unlikely to settle the moral divide in the case, but it does put the central question back in focus: how a charity could do some good while building itself on a story that was not true.
For now, the unresolved part is not what Believe In Magic looked like from the outside. It is how far the deception reached, and what became of Jean O'Brien after the collapse of the charity she launched with her daughter. That is the gap the new series is reopening, and it is the reason the story is back in circulation today.
