Royal Hoax DJ: Call Should Not Have Aired

By Jonathan Samuels, Australia Correspondent

One of the Australian DJs behind the royal prank phone call has broken her silence to say it should never have aired.

Mel Greig says she wanted the voices of the two nurses at the King Edward VII hospital in London to be disguised, but station bosses said no.

The notorious hoax call was linked to the death of nurse Jacintha Saldanha who put the call through to the ward where the Duchess of Cambridge was being treated.

Her request to make changes was refused and the call went to air as recorded, and without the hospital's permission.

Mel Greig told Channel 7's Sunday Night programme: "I absolutely expressed concern. As an announcer we are trained to always get permission if we're going to broadcast something, and it just didn't seem right that we'd broadcast that without permission and without doing what we'd normally do as announcers, so I was absolutely concerned."

Mother-of-two Jacintha Saldanha and her husband Ben Barboza

During the tearful interview she said: "I don't ever want to listen to it [the recording of the prank call] again, because I'm ashamed of myself. I should have tried harder not to let that prank call air. It never should have aired."

Mrs Saldanha left behind a note blaming the two Australian DJs for her death.

Greig says she has been depressed and is no longer the fun-loving person she was before the notorious royal prank call, broadcast by the Sydney radio station 2dayFM.

She told the programme she and her family had received death threats.

"They'd ring my mum and say 'Eye for an eye, you need to die because she died.' So many horrible calls. Dad was rushed to hospital from the stress and I thought, 'Great, now I've killed my dad too'."

In December 2012, Greig and her co-host Michael Christian pretended to be the Queen and Prince Charles when they called the London hospital where the pregnant Duchess was being treated for acute morning sickness.

During the interview a teary Greig said she felt ashamed and as if she had been living a "stranger's life" since the prank call.

Michael Christian is now back on air

"You're meeting a Mel that has no confidence, a Mel that's so lost with her life, a Mel that feels so much blame and so much guilt nine months down the track. This Mel's depressed," she said.

She was asked if she wanted to apologise to the nurse's family for their sake, or for herself.

"I think it goes both ways, I honestly do. By saying sorry I acknowledge that I know I've done something wrong and am deeply sorry for it, but for them as well if it's going to give them closure, if they need to know I cared about their mother then I think that's useful to them as well."

The London inquest into Mrs Saldanha's death has been postponed a number of times.

Greig, who was at the top of her career before the prank, hasn't returned to radio. Christian, however, is back on the air in Australia.

Southern Cross Austereo, 2dayFM's owners, told Sky News they had no comment.

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