SO UNSPEAKABLY awful. Can a prank call by a couple of commercial radio ''funsters'' from Australia really have triggered a woman's suicide in London? The randomness is shocking. A call that wasn't supposed to get through gets through. A conversation that wasn't supposed to happen happens. Radio ratings gold and high-fives all round. Everyone so caught up in the caper that no one imagines what could possibly go wrong.

It's all just a lark, and stunningly effective; global notoriety in 5½ seconds.

Everyone stoked. The British media, deep in the trauma of its post-Leveson funk, suddenly able to sneer at the audacity of the uncouth colonials in the hope that it might convince their reading and listening and viewing public that there is someone out there in the world more obnoxious and atrocious and craven than them.

The uncouth colonials for their part had stolen a march on the competition, which is always an objective if not the objective. The Sydney radio scene jumps the shark again, which is its stock-in-trade, its crass little signature. Look at me. I'm being outrageous. Isn't that cool?