They Started a Joke

Mel Greig (Photo credit: Eva Rinaldi Celebrity and Live Music Photographer)

You might have heard that Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, is going to be a mother soon.  The news has been treated with almost as much fanfare as, let's say, a birth that allegedly occured around 2000 years ago near Bethlehem.

When the Duchess had to be hospitalized for a bad case of morning sickness, a couple of radio hosts from Sydney, Australia named Mel Greig and Michael Christian had the bright idea of calling that hospital to get some information on her condition.  Imitating the voices of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles, they got through to a nurse, who thought she really was talking to members of the royal family.

Most everyone who saw and heard this thought the hoax was pretty hilarious.  Everyone, that is, except Jacintha Saldanha, the nurse who got punked.  She was found dead a couple of days after the prank call.  At 46, she left behind a husband and two children.

Authorities in Britain are still investigating the cause of Saldanha's death, but the hospital where she was employed and the royal family have claimed that they had nothing to do with this.

Meanwhile, back Down Under, Greig and Christian are in big trouble.  They've been suspended by their radio station (2Day FM), their show has been canceled, and they're facing jail time.  The parent company of 2Day FM has banned prank calls, and is reportedly giving a half-million dollars to Saldanha's family as part of a memorial fund.

Prank calls and practical jokes have been a staple of broadcasting for decades, from "Truth or Consequences" and "Candid Camera" in the 1950s to "Crank Yankers" and "Punk'd" in more recent years.  So have those morning-drive "zoos" on local radio across the country, taking unsuspecting people and playing jokes on them, mostly without incident.  Now there's going to be a lot more scrutiny from station management, ownership groups and the FCC.

All this royal baby talk has been temporarily suspended due to this tragedy.  But it will start up again when the birth date gets near.  Lots of names have been bandied about, mostly on the traditional side.  Here's our little suggestion:  If it's a girl, we think the heir to Prince William and Duchess Catherine should be . . .  Jacintha.