It sounded like the ultimate feel-good news story: an immigrant dishwasher in a small Chinese takeaway in England who had become a chart-topping pop star in the land of her birth - to the remarkable tune of 100 million downloads, no less.
The only trouble is the woman they dubbed 'China's Madonna' was nothing of the sort - Ayi Jihu, 26, is a virtual unknown in China, and the entire story appears to have been an elaborate hoax.
And the British media establishment swallowed it.
Calling her the 'dishy diva', the British tabloids fell over themselves in September to snap the singer as she returned - via stretched limo, naturally - to present a gold disc to her mother at her family's restaurant in Cambridge.
She was interviewed by the British television networks, including Sky News and BBC News 24, all saying that her incredible downloads statistic made her 'one of the world's biggest selling artists'.
'It's crazy,' she said in a live BBC interview in September, two weeks before the launch of her debut British single. 'I couldn't believe it. I hadn't realised how wild this thing was. I didn't have a big major label in China; I didn't go through that route.'