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The appeal, supported by the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers, which has 65 affiliated societies worldwide, became an international phenomenon. The Pope allowed the Great Bell in St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican to sound for Julie McDonnell and the Dalai Lama arranged for meditation bells to be rung in support at Dharamshala, his home on the edge of the Himalayas. Hand bells were rung over the North Pole at 38,000 ft on a flight from Gatwick to Vancouver, on the Great Wall of China, and by the Pyramids in Giza.

The campaign was highlighted in the Church Times and meticulously documented in The Ringing World — 'the weekly journal for church bell-ringers since 1911' — which listed every parish in the country that had taken part on its online 'Bellboard'.

On March 20, 2019, Julie McDonnell entered a plea of not guilty at Hastings Magistrates' Court. A seemingly straightforward prosecution, however, has dragged on interminably, with the defendant sometimes unable to attend court because she claimed she was suffering from multiple conditions including muscle weakness, PTSD, neurological problems, an eating disorder, and failing mental health which has, most recently, rendered her apparently mute. Now, four years on, there have been two sensational twists in this already extraordinary story.

Last week, after at least 20 hearings, seven different judges and two sets of solicitors, with the taxpayer footing the bill, the theft charge against McDonnell was dropped at Lewes Crown Court and a formal verdict of 'not guilty' entered because it was decided there was little prospect, in the circumstances, of the case ever going to trial — even though a succession of the aforementioned judges suspected McDonnell was malingering, 'playing the system', to quote one.

The bell-ringing campaign, it can also be revealed, was also based on a lie. Police discovered that Julie McDonnell had never undergone a stem cell transplant and could not, therefore, have been 'matched' with a compatible donor by the Anthony Nolan charity, as she had claimed.