The end of prank calls?

The death of the nurse Jacintha Saldanha has put the business of hoax calls under the spotlight. Where is the line between humour and cruelty?

Hoax calls - where someone winds up a friend or colleague by pretending to be their boss or an important person - are almost as old as the telephone itself.

They have been a staple of TV and radio entertainment programmes since the 1950s when American comedians Steve Allen and Johnny Carson began making them on the Tonight show.

There are numerous examples of rich and powerful people being hoaxed. The Queen in 1995 spent 17 minutes talking to a man she thought was the prime minister of Canada. It was actually Pierre Brassard, a Canadian radio presenter and impressionist. 

In 1998, Prime Minister Tony Blair took a call from a man claiming to be William Hague, leader of the Opposition. He immediately realised it was a hoax but took it in good humour. It was DJ Steve Penk's idea to try and get past the Downing Street switchboard and the caller was impressionist Jon Culshaw. 

Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett in 2006 thought she was taking a call from Chancellor Gordon Brown. It was actually impressionist Rory Bremner.

Cuban leader Fidel Castro unleashed a volley of abuse after being hoaxed in 2004 by a Miami radio station presenter pretending to be Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

But after the death of Jacintha Saldanha, days after putting through a hoax call to the Duchess of Cambridge's nurse, will people think twice before hatching such a prank?

Some say the game is up. Penk, who carried out hundreds of "wind-up" calls at Capital FM, says the recent tragedy will make it almost impossible for these pranks to continue.

"This will kill it, stop the art of winding people up." Comedy has become more politically correct in recent years and in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal there is a move to control the media, he says.

"Ofcom [the broadcasting regulator] are going to wrap it up in so much red tape it'll be almost impossible to get it on air."

Robin Galloway, a DJ on Glasgow's Clyde 1 radio station, has hoaxed Donald Trump, Paris Hilton and Jedward in the past. He has responded to the death of Jacintha Saldanha by suspending prank calls and withdrawing adverts for his Christmas compilation.

"I cannot see me doing them for the foreseeable future," Galloway says. But the outcry over the Australian hoax call will not necessarily end these calls forever. The public will move on and things may return to normal, he suggests.

"When they work, they work tremendously and the audience loves them."