Megan Bhari, Jean O'Brien Recast Believe In Magic Charity in BBC Two Series
Two's new three-part series The Mother of All Cons returns to believe in magic charity, the 2012 scheme built by Jean O'Brien and Megan Bhari. The case drew celebrity backing and raised hundreds of thousands of pounds before parents started questioning the story they had been told.
Jean O'Brien and her daughter launched Believe in Magic when Megan Bhari was 16 years old. By 2015, public appeals said Bhari urgently needed specialist treatment in the United States and reportedly raised around £120,000, while David Cameron called her “extraordinary” at a Downing Street reception.
2012 and the promise of Believe in Magic
Believe in Magic was presented as a charity for seriously ill children and their families, arranging trips, celebrity meet-and-greets, family holidays and once-in-a-lifetime events across the UK. Families said they did receive genuine support and opportunities, which helped the charity win trust from parents and supporters before the deception was exposed.
That goodwill widened beyond family circles. Harry Styles' mother took part in a 10-day trek to raise money for the charity, and the organization counted One Direction among its celebrity supporters while O'Brien and Bhari became public faces of one of Britain's most celebrated children's charities.
Parents question Megan Bhari
Parents began challenging Megan Bhari's brain tumour diagnosis after noticing details she and Jean shared did not match their own experience of caring for a child with the same diagnosis. Bhari had risen to national prominence after claiming on a blog that she was living with a brain tumour, and the charity's message depended on that illness being real.
Megan Bhari died in 2018 from a heart issue, not a brain tumour. An inquest found no evidence that she had ever suffered from a brain tumour and said she had fatty liver disease and had received treatment for an opioid addiction.
The Mother of All Cons today
Jamie Bartlett said Bhari was “but not of the thing she claimed, nor to the severity she claimed.” That line sits at the center of the new series, because it separates the support some families genuinely received from the false medical story that drove the charity's profile and fundraising.
The new series gives viewers a clean read on the case: the charity's practical work with children was real, the central illness claim was not, and the public figures attached to the project helped mask that gap for years. For viewers, the value now is not outrage for its own sake but the record of how a compelling cause can still rest on a lie.
