There seems to be a perception that practical jokes and prank phone calls are funny. This is two-sided. To the perpetrator they are hilarious, they may be regarded as funny for bystanders, but for those who are the butt of such events, no matter how much they they may appear to be entertained by their own fright or humiliation and good sports about it, they are rarely honestly amused. Again for perpetrators there seems to be a perception that practical jokes are harmless by their nature, and that no matter how dangerous that event is, no one will be harmed. Over the past thirty years I can recall a number of times when as a practical joke someone has been set on fire – and severely injured. A recent case in Hawkes Bay where several youths held down a boy, poured petrol over him and set him on fire resulted in a sentence of three years for the ringleader and rightly so. This was done to a sixteen-year-old who was still unwell at the time (effects of a serious illness) bystanders stood around laughing, and refusing to help him, and he was left alone to bicycle home in considerable pain, and horrified at what so-called friends had done to him. The fire has left him permanently scarred and most probably also short on the ability to trust people in future . My comment would be that I’m very very glad I don’t have “friends” like that.

Then there was the hoax call by Mel and Malcolm from a Sydney radio station to the hospital in which Kate Middleton was ill. Pretending to be members of the Royal family they gained access to private information and they then broadcast the call and information. To achieve this result they lied to two nurses one of whom appears to have taken her own life as a result. Alternatively she may have been so distressed by her part in it that she self-medicated and accidentally overdosed. Apparently the practical joke was hilarious until then with the hoaxers posting on Twitter, and finding their actions clever and the verbal discussion of their call wittily amusing. All the way up until the nurse’s death was announced and then abruptly, the pair are on leave out of respect.. Oh please. They’re on leave while their employers find out how big a row this is going to cause. In fact as I understand it, what they did breached Australian Broadcasting standards. What part of, medical information is private? What part of, you’re risking the jobs of these two women? What part of, this is in breach of the laws of your own authority didn’t they understand?

A journalistic scam can be for the public good. Watergate, discovering that a prince’s ex-wife is prepared to sell introductions to him to all and sundry so long as the money is right, uncovering a politician or media personality who stands loudly for family values while sexually abusing small children, all of that is legitimate. A prank call where the station checks with the pranked that they are still okay with the call being now broadcast, and they agree to it, that’s fine too. But hoaxing a nurse into putting you through to a ward, where you hoax the private medical details of a current patient out of another nurse, is far from the public good. It calls into disrepute every journalist of integrity.

Practical joking is not funny most of the time. It relies on the pain, humiliation or distress of another person. I have a sense of humour certainly, (and I have seven published non-fiction humour books – the first published in 1993 and still selling – to prove it ) but I don’t find the pain, fear, or humiliation of someone else that amusing. Nor do I find possible outcomes – a heart attack, emotional distress that can last for days, actual injury, or loss of trust in those you believed to be your friends, something to strive for. It’s probably unlikely, but I hope this pair lose their jobs, I hope the Australian Broadcasting Authority brings charges against the radio station people who cleared this, and most of all, if it is definite that their hoax was the direct cause of this nurse’s death, I hope that her family sue vigorously. And I hope that whatever the legal outcomes, that the death of Jacintha Saldanha is a lesson to those who think that practical jokes, prank calls, and hoaxes are funny, without penalty, and without consequences. Because all too often they aren’t!

And a week later – The aftermath on this phone call continues. The DJs in question appeared on TV to make a public apology which certainly seemed to me to be very much a case of crocodile tears for public consumption. The Station claims that they tried to call the UK hospital five times to no result. Tried isn’t the point! They should not have broadcast until they’d succeeded and received clearance on something this intrusive and as we can all guess, they wouldn’t have got it, which may be why they accepted an “inability” to reach the hospital, and went ahead. And on the list of those who need a reality check has to be the station lawyer or lawyers. How could they have felt that this call was okay to broadcast? It is looking more and more likely that there will be legal action, even possible criminal charges as a result of this event. I wonder who’ll stand up to accept that they had some part in this tragedy? The hospital who seem to have been short staffed and allowed a nurse (untrained in protocol) to work the switchboard, and who also seem to not be assisting the grief-stricken family? The Radio Station Djs, lawyer/s, and administration? The station has now offered the family a large sum in compensation. They’re damned if they did and damned if they didn’t on that one. I’ve already heard someone ask if they offered the money to get ahead of a possible court case for a lot more – something that also crossed my mind when I heard of the offer.

And I notice that now too there are claims the nurse must have already had mental problems to be so distraught. That’s possible. What’s also possible is that a naive woman, deeply venerating the royal family, feeling that she had betrayed them, betrayed her nursing ethics, and brought disgrace upon her family, might have simply been so distressed that she reacted. She comes from a country where honour is everything. She may have seen her act as a necessary atonement and no, that isn’t crazy, just a different mindset. But whatever the ultimate outcome of all this, I hope that it will result in a tightening of regulations that cover this type of phone call, with clearer guidelines and stronger penalties. Because I’d like to see this event as the last one of its kind, and the last injury or death that results from what was supposed to be a screamingly-funny practical joke and ended up as anything but amusing.

In November I had the chance to purchase some DVDs very cheaply, I did so, settled to watch them and noticed that casting people of a realistic age seems to be a problem in some TV series and movies. One of my purchases was the box set of Agatha Christie’s series of the Tommy and Tuppence stories on DVD. These were filmed over 1982-4. I’ve always liked the written tales and looked forward to watching them. I was therefore the more irked to find that where, in the original book it’s made abundantly clear that Tommy and Tuppence would have been in their early 20s, and during the early tales would have remained about that age, in the TV series the actors playing them are a good fifteen years older. It isn’t that the two actors aren’t normally very good, usually they both are, but with this series both fail to convince. Here you have two people in their late thirties and who look that age acting like giddy young people, freed from many restrictions immediately after a major war, and almost drunk on the freedom from danger and fear, and having found each other. The silly comments, the excitement, the giddy atmosphere would be convincing if the main actors were indeed in their early 20s. In this series they came across as staid mutton dressed as prancing lamb and merely looked rather silly when they said a fair proportion of the lines. I watched the first and longest of the episodes, and two of the shorter ones before deciding to pass on this box set without watching the other eight episodes. I was disappointed, not so much at the actors who can only work with the material for which they’ve been signed, but with the casting people, who should have seen that this wouldn’t and didn’t work.

A week later I watched the Australian movie, Tomorrow When the War began, based on the series by John Marsden. I have the entire book series and love them. Unfortunately this didn’t apply to the movie. Again one of the main things that bothered me was the casting. Almost all of the actors were in their twenties, but in the books they are around 17-18 at most and somehow, having actors who were years older speaking the lines just didn’t gel. It can be done, I’ve seen plenty of movies and TV series where you know that the convincing ‘teenager’ on screen is years older in reality, but here it just felt fake to me. The film did extremely well in Australia, well here, but not well elsewhere and it looks as if the projected sequels may not happen. With which, sadly, I’m in agreement. The books are far better and given the option I’d rather read them again than watch the movie/s even if they were free. I thought the acting patchy, unconvincing in too many places, and not a patch on the books, the more so as I was kept too conscious that the ‘teenagers’, weren’t.

I had the same problem years ago when I watched the BBC adaption of Rosemary Sutcliffe’s book, The Eagle of the Ninth. The two main characters were played by men around 30, whereas (again) they should have been teenagers. The newest version of this book appeared in 2011, and again (sigh) both actors were too old, one being 31 and the other 25. What is it with casting directors, can’t they see that having an actor who is very visibly much older than the book character is implausible for fans of that book or series. At least and thanks be for it, the Harry Potter series had actors which were pretty much the age the characters were in the books. But I’ve come to the conclusion that in future I’d do better to stick with the books and ignore many of their film adaptions. Unless, that is, some casting directors pull their socks up.

yesterday I posted several items on my blog, this morning I clicked on it to check something and discovered that in less than 24 hours I’d received another 50+, and I wonder why on earth these idiots keep bothering. Apart from anything else, I have no interest in buying camping gear (I’m crippled) fake Louis Vuitton handbags, (a fashion icon I am not) American vaporisers, (isn’t that something you use for asthma and I don’t have asthma) 49 kinds of cosmetics (I don’t use them either) and a weird and wonderful assortment of other merchandise,  most of which I wouldn’t want if it was free, let alone at the prices they’re probably demanding.

Nor are these offers at the first time of asking. Most are something I’ve seen over and over and why – if I didn’t want them the first time – would the idiots trying to sell them, assume that I’d want them the 27th time either? Let alone trying to persuade me by praising my blog, claiming that they have clicked on the wrong item and could I I come back to them to correct that (oh, please…) or offering ways in which I could make my blog noticeable throughout the blogosphere, improve it tremendously, and – and you’re wasting your time with those too, my site is run by a friend who does all that sort of thing. me – like Schultz – I know nothink. So to everyone who’d like to sell me ugg boots, fake fashion items, and all the other stuff you’re offering in which I have no interest – and if I did I’m perfectly capable of looking it up at source and buying it anyhow – I know you aren’t listening, I know you won’t stop, but let it be known that on a matter of principle,  I won’t ever buy anything I see offered by spam on my site. And to those of you out there who read my blog, I suggest that you make the same decision. because maybe if enough of us did that, spam would no longer be worth it and it’d stop – and isn’t that a pleasant thought on which to sign off for the day!