The nurse who took the prank call committed suicide

That's my bottom line. What something feels like. The visceral test.

It does seem an extreme action. And I doubt that the incident is the only trigger. But I also hate practical jokes. They seem mean and there's always a victim. The problem with bullying is that you never know how tenuous is the emotional structure of the scapegoat, whether that person brings it on himself or not.

I agree with you Farmerman. I dislike hearing the word suicide used as a verb. It's used that way by people in the mental health field on a regular basis. But no matter how many times I've heard it, it still annoys me.

I can understand not liking how any one word is used or how the acceptable used of a word is changing over time but then English is an living language and usage does change over time.

That stand out in a big way when reading a book written a few hundreds years ago.

Bill, It's true that a language does change with usage. But also, as you point out, I don't have to like it. To me, the use of the word suicide as a verb sounds ignorant.

Who of the hoax "victims" gave retrospective permission for broadcast?

Bill is nOT a mental health professional. He is not a native english speaker either, so weve gently tried to steer his languiage skills and he seems to resist. He will look something up and run with it and frequently miss the sublety of history and language in the mix

It's all extreme.

I hate practical jokes, too.....but the outpouring of hate against these two DJs is extreme.

I hope the station takes a real hit, as it seems they broke the broadcasting code, but the current orgy of hate is kind of obscene.

Its been a "Shock Jock" featurte in te US for yers. Our jocks get their listeners all febrile, and (sort of) turn it into a contest to play clips from the most outrageous callously cruel calls to people who are suffering in natural disasters. Then the jocks, like STern, will try to disavow any knowl;edge and association with the pranks calls.

Yet, these guys have astronomical ratings and the ratings is what sells unless the owners of the stations have some nascent sense of decency and they discipline or fire the on-airs.

Don't we all. The subtle nature of history and the language is a relative thing. Backing yourself into Bill's supposed faults at a slightly slower speed than he does is not that big a deal. It's going forward that might get you moving in a more fruitful direction towards such an unreachable goal.

Reading Flaubert, for example, without knowing that as a young lad he used to watch cadavers being dissected, some fresh from the guillotine, and his father throw extraneous bits to dogs waiting outside the window, might well lead to not quite understanding his literary foibles and his general view of human nature.

We are habituated into thinking we have a good grasp of everything that our beloved Media reports to us. And it's broad-brush stuff. And we get used to it and start broad-brushing everything ourselves in our worship of our betters.

When, or if, the Duchess's child become a monarch there will be biographies written about him or her.

Would a biographer include this regrettable incident?

The last time I read a Salambo (or naughtier works by said author), I was quite impressed at the perfect diction and word usage. Or am I wrong?

You're not wrong except in saying "perfect". Flaubert was never satisfied. Salammbo took 5 years.

I gather it's the same here. I never listen to such stations, so I had no idea about the hoax culture. I don't think they're doing hoax calls to people in natural disasters though!

Hell"Origin of the Species..." took over twenty and look the author had continuing doubts about his "little work" till the day he died.
So ole Gustav need not have felt any trepidations

Origins is very well written. They were both dedicated.

We have djs who make prank calls over here, but they're not allowed to broadcast them without the victims written consent. What normally happens is someone is set up by friends and family. Lets say you've just put up a new fence, you'd probably get a call telling you to take it down because it's the wrong sort of wood or disturbing to wasps, and you owe a huge fine. So you'd be very relieved to find out it was all a joke.

So the Australian djs broke UK law by not getting written permission, and by attempting to gain confidential medical information.

That's news to me izzy. I don't listen to radio much but I have never heard of that sort of thing. They should be sacked.

Why don't they do detailed descriptions of lurid sexual depravity and debauchery?

I don't know, maybe you should phone in and suggest it.

Lets say your mates decided to set you up. You'd probably get a phone call purporting to be from customs and excise claiming you'd been selling your homebrew. They would say they had more than one witness and would talk about the possibility of criminal charges. After you'd done all the shouting, they'd come clean and let you know it was a prank call. Then they would ask for permission to broadcast it, and that permission would have to be in writing.

I know this from Channel 4 news where they interviewed a dj called Steve Penk. He said one of his victims asked for the call to be played at his funeral, so a lot of people see the joke. In any event it's a structured prank, aided and abetted by friends and family, which is a million miles from cold calling a hospital.

Must all the parties give written permission to play the prank on radio?

I think that, here in US, the prank caller (who is usually NOT an on-air type) makes the call to a hapless victim and records it to send to the shock jock. The prankee may have no say in its on-air usage.