The prank telephone call by two young Australian DJs, pretending to be the Queen and Prince Charles, to the hospital treating the Duchess of Cambridge was an idiotic caper with unforeseen tragic consequences. Unbelievably, their laughable attempts at a Royal accent were enough to fool two nurses at the King Edward VII Hospital, so that one nurse was persuaded to disclose confidential information regarding the health of the Duchess. The other nurse, who answered the phone call and passed it over to her colleague, was evidently so distressed by the subsequent uproar that she was driven to take her own life. Predictably there have been demands in both the UK and Australia for the two DJs to face the full wrath of the law but is this fair?

So-called prank calls by clowning DJs have been with us for years. Sometimes amusing, occasionally offensive but often just plain tiresome they have a certain appeal to audiences the world over. On this occasion the prank went horribly and fatally wrong and as ever, in the midst of all the outrage, there has been a clamour for retribution. The attention has largely been focussed on the DJs who in actual fact are probably  the players in this tragedy least worthy of our attention.

In their wildest nightmares they could never, for a moment, have considered or foreseen that their juvenile behaviour might lead to somebody’s suicide and, in all honesty, who could? No, the real cause of the tragedy lies elsewhere. Firstly, these DJs have producers and bosses who decide on what goes out or doesn’t go out on air. Even more significantly it has been reported that this particular broadcast was vetted and passed fit for broadcast by the radio station’s lawyers. So how can the DJs be held responsible? If you give your 5 year old child a carving knife and he carves up your furniture is the child to blame or is it you, the supervising and consenting adult?

Secondly, following the theme of responsibility, who is responsible for the employment of staff at the hospital? Who made the decision to appoint the poor nurse, an Indian immigrant with possibly not the greatest command of the English language, as telephonist in a hospital famous for treating members of the Royal Family and other well-known public figures. Such patients need considerably more protection and security than us ordinary folk and common sense would indicate the need to employ staff of the highest quality. It was surely foreseeable that a hospital such as this was always likely to attract prank or crank calls so therefore the appointment of intelligent, confident, no-nonsense staff to properly screen and vet telephone calls should have been a top priority.

The higher levels of management at the hospital most certainly need to be held to account and questioned in detail as to why their high profile patients were not provided with adequate protection and screening. They and the radio station’s management (and lawyers) are the main culprits in this case, not the hapless DJs.