Jacintha Saldanha (SolarPix/PacificCoastNews.com)
OUTRAGE: Mel Greig (left) and Michael Christian (right) pretended to be Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles when calling King Edward VII’s Hospital. Nurse Jacintha Saldanha (left) killed herself three days later. (AFP/Getty Images)
OUTRAGE: Mel Greig (left) and Michael Christian (right) pretended to be Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles when calling King Edward VII’s Hospital (top left). Nurse Jacintha Saldanha (inset) killed herself three days later. (
)
The Aussie DJs who pranked the hospital where Kate Middleton was being treated, apparently driving a nurse to kill herself, broke their silence yesterday, saying they never thought their trick would work.
“We wanted to be hung up on,” said Mel Greig.
In a joint interview with Australia’s “A Current Affair,’’ her co-host, Michael Christian, said their production team thought of the idea just before going on air.
“[We] just had the idea for just a simple harmless phone call . . . We thought . . . it was going to go for 30 seconds [and] we were going to be hung up on,” he said.
Greig said, “we thought a hundred people before us would’ve tried it, we thought it was such a silly idea and the accents were terrible and not for a second did we expect to speak to Kate let alone have a conversation with anyone at the hospital. We wanted to be hung up on.”
READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRANK CALL’
She added, “These prank calls are made every day on every radio station in every country around the world and . . . no one could’ve imagined this to happen.”
Southern Cross Austereo, the parent company of 2DayFM, released a statement Monday saying Greig and Christian’s show had been terminated and there would be a company-wide suspension of prank calls. The DJs themselves remain suspended.
Both shock jocks cried as they recounted how they learned that Jacintha Saldanha — who transferred their call into the nurses’ station — had killed herself.
“There’s not a minute that goes by where we don’t think about her family and what they must be going through and the thought we may have played a part in that is gut wrenching,” Grieg added.
Meanwhile, a rep for their radio station griped that the London hospital should have known how “fragile’’ its nurse was.
Sandy Kaye told The Post that Saldanha must have been depressed or suffering from mental distress if she melted down over a “harmless’’ joke.
“Surely, there’s a lot more to suicide than a prank call where a woman has [done nothing more than] put through a phone call,” Kaye said.
“Perhaps the hospital should have known about that. If that turns out to be the case and they knew about her fragile situation, then why would you leave her on the front line?”
Saldanha — a 46-year-old married mother of two — killed herself Friday, about 72 hours after the prank.
The DJs called King Edward VII’s Hospital and tricked Saldanha — with bad impressions of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles — into transferring their call.
Another nurse, fooled by the prank, nervously gave an update on the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge who had severe nausea.
“These poor kids [Greig and Christian] have done nothing wrong, and they’re being crucified by the world,” Kaye said.
Saldanha had been set to meet with her bosses at the hospital to discuss what happened, but had not been disciplined.