Key won´t turn following auto gearshift replacement

Hello,

My father has a 2002 S320 in which the car became stuck in Park. A recovery guy came and knocked it into neutral where it remained with the key in the ignition and he was told to leave it like that. I then found several videos showing this to be a common problem so I removed the shift mechanism and successfully removed the the broken plastic lever and ordered a new aluminum one from the States. Meanwhile I put the mechanism back in (without the over as shown on various Youtube videos as it would appear that some people don´t bother to maintain the Park lock) and the shifter moves freely into any gear (albeit at the moment without the safety of the Park feature/key removal disabled). The black release cable is correctly connected as it came out and I have manually pressed on this and can see the key wiggle slightly this confirms it is still correctly connected at the EIS.

I accidentally took the optical key out and now find that I cannot turn the key to turn on the power, ignition or crank the engine. I have tried all sorts of things but it will not turn. The battery became drained so I am using a jump charger each time to feed the battery with power. I also note that the steering wheel has not locked and I believe this may be related but I thought I would ask here in case I make things worse by trying to lock it and perhaps enabling a reset of the key turning facility.

Can anyone help?!!