Monday 10th December

I really don’t know why some stories affect one worse than others.  We can blithely hear of an earthquake in a far-off land and hardly register the number of the dead; we can see those all too familiar pictures of bloated-bellied children, flies crawling round the eyes of African babies and not be affected at all; we can see the lined up shroud-wrapped bodies of yet another civil war atrocity and not really notice if it is Syria or the Congo, and yet, and yet, just sometimes a story almost breaks your heart.

Unlike most of the population who were so excited at Kate being pregnant, I shrugged a sigh of boredom, amazed that such a mundane event should be top of the news.  When will the ‘Royals’ be treated like everyone else was my response, but grudgingly I accepted that for most people it was good news.  Then when the prank phone-call was revealed, at first I thought ‘How puerile’, and then when I heard the soundtrack of the call, at least to the first nurse who put the hoaxers through I couldn’t believe her naivety; they didn’t sound remotely like the Queen or Prince Charles.  Like everyone else I had almost forgotten it by the end of the day.

Then I just couldn’t believe on Friday when that poor nurse was found dead.  I was heartbroken to think that a life had been wasted because of a prank.  And I who love humour almost above everything hadn’t thought it was remotely funny In the first place.  What sort of people think that ringing up a complete stranger at work, when they may be under pressure and doing a really important job, and ‘pretending’ to be the Queen is okay in any way?  Had they learnt nothing from the Russell Brand and Jonathon Ross fiasco?  What gave them the right to broadcast an innocent public servant’s guileless and yes probably naïve response?  And what torment and shame must that hard-working and honest woman have gone through, what inner agony that made her take her own life to escape it all?  A so, so tragic story, and it really affected me, especially in the light of Leveson.  The press and the media just don’t get it, do they?  Nobody, not even so-called ‘Celebrities’ deserve to be served up for public derision.  Report the real news guys, and Comedians – think up your own jokes, don’t try and get your laughs from the gullibility of people who don’t even know they are the butt of your puerile lack of humour.