One of the Australian DJs who made a prank call to the central London hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge was being treated has been awarded the title of “top jock” by his employer.
Nurse Jacintha Saldanha was found dead three days after she took the call from Michael Christian and his colleague Mel Greig when they rang King Edward VII’s Hospital where Kate was being treated for severe morning sickness in December.
Attempting to find the “best in the land”, Southern Cross Austereo’s (SCA) Today Network named Christian as one of the network’s best DJs in a competition it says has created a “community for SCA’s seasoned and emerging talent”.
Christian was a joint winner in the internal competition and will be “jetting off to LA for a tour of KISS studios”, according to the network’s website.
Quoted on the website, he said despite what “happened in the past few months I’m still at the top of my game”.
He said: “If this competition has taught me anything, it’s that there’s a lot of talent in this company. Plus it’s given all our announcers access to ideas, ways of thinking and people we might normally have day-to-day contact with.
“From the start I felt like I had something to prove to myself. That regardless of all that’s happened in the past few months I’m still at the top of my game. So it felt good to see my name at the top of the final leader board! Congrats to Ellie and Perry as well. Bring on round two!”
Ms Saldanha’s death three days after the phone call sparked a worldwide backlash against the 2Day FM DJs.
The mother-of-two, from Bristol, answered the phone and put the pair – who were posing as the Prince of Wales and the Queen – through to a colleague who gave details of the Duchess’s condition.
The inquest into Ms Saldanha’s death will take place in September and Greig will give evidence.
The DJ said she wants to “address any questions” surrounding her role in the run-up to the death.
Christian and Greig were suspended by 2Day FM in Sydney in the aftermath of the incident, but Christian returned to the airwaves, appearing on sister station Fox FM in Melbourne.