Jacinda Saldanha
I don’t know any more than anyone else what finally drove Jacinda Saldanha to such a desperate act as suicide. She was the nurse who was “duped” in the feeble Australian radio prank whilst attention-seeking Kate Middleton was in hospital with morning sickness in the early stages of her pregnancy.
Mel Greig and Michael Christian
Mel Greig and Michael Christian, the air-headed Australian djs who perpetrated the “joke” by putting on “funny” voices in a telephone call to the hospital by pretending to be the Queen and Prince Charles asking about Kate Middleton’s condition. OK, it wasn’t that funny, we know that, funny voice imitation is the lowest form of weak joke, and, dare I say it, we don’t often expect sophisticated humour from those kinds of radio shows whether Australian, British or from any other low budget airwave factory. Mel and Michael fit the caricature precisely. That the joke was aimed at making an “ordinary” – non-celebrity – person look stupid made its consequences even more unfortunate. Jacinda Saldanha is dead, extraordinarily and unpredictably. Mel and Michael are upset and, thankfully, silenced. They have been receiving hate mail from outraged members of the public and they have retreated from the lime light. They might well be foolish and not very entertaining people doing their bit to keep their jobs as panderers of feeble humour but they are not murderers.
Prince William and Kate Middleton
Mel and Michael are probably not very intelligent people and neither are Will and Kate – nothing wrong with that, of course, as long as they keep out of our lives. They too, according to their spokesman, are upset, “saddened” by Jacinda Saldanha’s death. It wasn’t their fault either. Kate Middleton’s medical condition should have remained private and certainly no one should have tried to jokily ring up the hospital about it. It might have been better though if the royal couple had tried to keep the whole thing out of the newspapers and off our television screens. Throwing up is best done in private. We were already told much more than we needed to know about her morning sickness and days into the “news story” our tabloid newspapers were still devoting the front page to such pointlessness as ‘Kate feeling a bit better.’
I was already worrying about such an early burst of hysteria surrounding the royal impregnation and wondered if we were really going to be fed such sentimental crap for the full nine months of Kate’s pregnancy As I said, I don’t know why Jacinda Saldanha reacted so strongly to being duped by those foolish Australians and their radio bosses but I truly hope that she will be the only victim of this country’s over-reaction to things royal.
Princess Diana
Kate is carrying a future monarch (if the monarchy lasts that long) but, more importantly for many of the highly emotional people out there already pouring over every inch of the newsprint attached to this story, she is carrying Princess Diana’s grandchild – hopefully a grandaughter who should be named Diana – who might well become Queen one day now that the sexist royal hereditary is going to be changed. Hysteria and, yes, it has to be admitted, love, stick to Diana’s memory. Her admirers see her in William’s face and, irony of ironies, now dream of a real Queen Diana bringing this weirdly unstoppable royal fairy story to its ‘happy’ ending.
We owe it to Jacinda Saldanha that this royal hysteria be kept under control. I know that royal stories sell papers but, just for once, ladies and gentlemen of the press, shut it, OK. You too Mel and Michael, and you, Will and Kate. Kate Middleton’s pregnancy should be allowed to progress in private whether she wants that or not.
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