Royal Baby

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  • Everything else aside, in my view this underlines how dated prank phone calls made by radio presenters are, perhaps now they won't be done any more.  I'm sure it was all new and cutting edge in the 1970s when Noel Edmonds was at his comedy peak but it seems very old hat now.

  • Very sad situation and I'm sure the people responsible for the Prank feel terrible, having said that it would be impossible to foresee how such a prank could cause this. The poor woman must have been quite fragile beforehand, or she must have been scared out of her wits at possible repercussions, as I supose it could have been a potentially job threatening issue as I'm led to believe she should not have divulged such information.

  • Martenkay wrote (see)
    Muttley wrote (see)

    But the nurse wasn't in the full glare of the media. She only became known after her death.

    It's all very sad but I don't think the pranksters can be blamed. I sense there are other factors at play in the poor woman's life or work that we don't know about.

    Sorry, my point being what this poor woman feared was about to happen.

    Probably the positive will be that the privacy of the nurse that actually divulged the details will be preserved. Surely the press post Lord Leveson will not publish?

    Both nurses will have been disciplined or at least severely spoken to (despite the kind words now being uttered) most likely by

    a) The Hospital b) The Palace flunkies c) Royal Security

    The Palace and Security will not have trod gently on the woman's feeling and will likely have been all over her family history - perhaps that will prove to be the other factor.

    Martenkay, where do you get your information from?

    The hospital aren't saying anything of the sort. In fact they told her that she wasn't in any trouble. 

    I'm not sure how you can "breach security" with a telephone call. How would anyone have been in any sort of danger? Obviously Joe Bloggs getting put through to HRH might warant a review of precedure for vetting calls (it could have been a journalist from one of the tabloids after all, although it's unlikely after Leveson) but what sort of harm was actually done to the royal couple? None whatsoever.

    Most of the royals are actually pretty laid back. Prince Charles himself made a joke of it and I can't imagine Kate, or especially William being particularly concerned, if anything they were probably quite amused.  And can you imagine the harm it would do them if they had had been highly critical of the nurse or the hospital? It would have made them look high-handed and arrogant - hardly the image they wany to portray. 

    And mentioning the woman's "family history" seems to be your way of accusing the Royal family of some sort of racism which I'm sure does not exist. 

  • For what it's worth, I can see Colin's point from earlier on this thread.

     

  • BookyBooky ✭✭✭

    I've not read back fully, so someone may have made this point - but if the story hadn't been picked up by the British media, it's unlikey that anyone in this country would have even known the prank had happened...

  • Please everyone stop calling it a 'prank'.

    Ringing a hospital to obtain information about a patient by deceit  is NOT a fecking 'prank' however you try and dress it up.

    The damage these dickheads have done is beyond the immediacy of the horrific events with the nurse. Anyone genuinely trying to get information about a sick loved one in hospital is going to come up against a complete brick wall.

  • it has to be a prank if you pretend in crap accents to be the queen and make stupid corgi noises in the background........they would not of made it so stupid if they were really trying to get private info.......they would never of dreamed someone would actually put them through and then give them actual information...

  • Nope sorry Seren, you simply cannot defend in any way shape or form what they tried to do by dismissing it as simply a 'prank' .... by doing so you are helping them cover themselves, and they should not be allowed to do that.

    Phoning a hospital to try and get information by deception is wrong wrong wrong and (regardless of silly voice or not ... imagine the outcry if a genuine patients relative rang with a slightly strange voice and was denied because they thought they were a 'prankster' ... nurses are not employed to discern what is a prank and what is not ... they are employed to look after the sick!)

  • RicFRicF ✭✭✭

    Bruce, sorry. Facts.

    It was a prank call. This call, not any call, this one.

    An unedifying piece of entertainment inasmuch as taking the p... is the lowest form of comedy. 

    And if the Dj's were directly responsible for the nurses death, then they must be charged with manslaughter. 

    Post mortem today. So another search for facts.

    We can speculate all we like. And an awful lot of assumptions are being made.

    How did the nurse die? I've no idea.

    Did she leave a suicide note blaming the Dj's? I've no idea.

    What if the post mortem revealed she died of natural causes? 

     

    🙂

  • I don't remember all this huffing and puffing and moralizing when Candid Camera was on. Practical jokes have been around as long as human beings have. What the DJs did was silly but harmless enough.

    If you want a really scary "prank", try this one:

  • I don't remember the Candid Camera epsiode where just for a bit of a laugh they tried to illicit confidential information from a hospital about a patient .... maybe I missed that one ... is it on YouTube  image

     

  • Did they try to elicit confidential information? From what I've seen they just tried to get through and were gobsmacked when they did. Did they actually ask for details of Kate's condition beyond how she was feeling?

    I haven't listened to the broadcast, mind ... but even Charlie Windsor wasn't that bothered.

  • Worse things can happen, Noel Edmonds late breakfast show killed a man in 1986, even though they were warned off the stunts by the HSE after previous accidents and injuries. That type of stunt has been stopped which I'd agree with, but as Muttley says it was a simple prank and meant no harm. Despite having the greatest sympathy for the deceased woman, I cannot see how they could be held responsible for the wildy inappropriate reaction.

  • suicide is a complex business.

  • I don't blame the 2 DJs, but I do think the Radio station and/or the programme's producers have some responsibility in this.

    Ultimately, prank calls are at the expense and embarrassment of the person on the end of the phone - So the nurses taking the call in this case, not the royals who were simply the subject matter.

    Of course they couldn't have known the outcome, and the suicide is surely not directly or solely related to the prank call, although it was probably a tipping point in this poor woman's circumstances.

    HOWEVER, they do appear to have acted illegally in broadcasting (and possibly even making) the call: There are laws in both the UK and Australia which cover the conduct of things pranks calls for entertainment purposes, and both have wording along the lines that, if the recipient of the call is identifiable, then permission must be sought from them before the broadcast (hence, there's usually a 'reveal' at the end of most candid camera type pranks) - So in this case, certainly the nurses, possibly the hospital and mayby even the patient.

    No doubt their lawyers will be claiming that the British nurses would not be 'identifiable' in Australia where the programme was broadcast but, given the subject of the call and the inevitable viral attention it would receive, that's surely a dodgy arguement.

    Any why even make the call in the first place, as it would be hugely doubtful that permission would ever be given by either the embarrassed nurses, the hospital or the royals?

    I'm inclined to think that the broadcast of the call flouted the spirit, if not the letter, of the law. And if a radio station does that, it becomes accountable for the consequences, however unlikely they might have been to foresee.

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