Andy Burnham has just found out that pranksters are no laughing matter

As with victims of more serious crimes, I often find myself feeling sympathy towards people in public life who are duped by prank callers. So it is with the case of the text messages exchanged between Andy Burnham and someone posing as White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

Details remain scant – we don’t yet know the figure behind the prank – but history suggests there could be repercussions. Imagine if the British prime minister had said something playfully indiscreet to “Wiles”... Make Trump look like an idiot and it could derail any chance of a new working relationship between the White House and Downing Street.

The potential for disaster is no laughing matter. The US president could ramp up trade tariffs on Britain and destroy jobs, or withdraw military cooperation in a huff.

But can you also imagine if Burnham is revealed to have written something overtly ingratiating about Wiles’s boss? His lead in the political popularity stakes would never recover.

This isn’t the first time that a highest-level prank has had political ramifications. The classic example happened in 1995, when a radio host successfully prank-called Queen Elizabeth by impersonating the Canadian prime minister, Jean Chrétien.

After pleasantries about him being rather stressed, the faux Chrétien asked Her Majesty to intervene in the highly sensitive issue of Québécois independence from Canada: “Should Your Majesty have the kindness to make a public intervention, we think that your word could give back to the citizens of Quebec the pride of being members of a united country...”

Ever helpful and wishing, as Queen of Canada, to act upon the advice of her prime minister – but also conscious of her constitutionally non-party role – she replied carefully, saying that she “will probably be able to do something for you”. She invited him to send a text over for consideration. Of course, it never went any further, and the Queen, even as she was being deceived and manipulated, stuck admirably to the rules. But it could have been far worse.

The real prime minister of Canada would never have put the monarch in such a dilemma. (A character such as Boris Johnson might – but he was mercifully unique in Elizabeth II’s reign.) But, then as now, I did feel, without being condescending, that trying to make a fool out of the ultimate public servant was plain wrong.

The right kind of prank was the time that the brilliant Jon Culshaw launched his career on live radio by getting through to Tony Blair by doing his William Hague impression – which sounds more like Hague than Hague does. Blair was happy to chat away inconsequentially, and the leader of the opposition offered to lend him his Cher fitness video.

Culshaw’s spell was only broken when he addressed Blair as “Tony”, because Hague, being old-fashioned, only ever called him “prime minister”. Clocking the mistake, Blair said: “That’s quite a good imitation…”, and the game was up. No malice was involved – just good, clean, harmless fun.

The trouble with impersonation pranks is that, often, they’re just not very funny. Satire needs to have a point – not just be pointlessly vindictive. And they can go horribly wrong, such as in 2012, when two Australian radio hosts called the hospital treating the Duchess of Cambridge and pretended to be the Queen. The switchboard put the call through. The resulting outrage and media fallout ultimately led to the tragic suicide of Jacintha Saldanha, the nurse who had simply been trying to do her duty by discussing her patient’s condition.

Nothing much good ever comes from these japes, and there has never been any public interest justification for them. So far as I am aware, so far from exposing duplicity, conspiracy, hypocrisy or treachery, they actually usually show people as you’d hope to find them, just doing their jobs.

Unless I’m much mistaken, Burnham will have been his usual WYSIWYG self as he tapped away with the most powerful woman in the world. We’ll only have to worry if one of the stand-ups who’ve already perfected their Our Andy impersonation – either Matt Forde, Russell Kane or Geoff Norcott – decides to try their luck with the White House switchboard.