Royal hoax DJ Mel Greig tells UK conference she is wiser and ready to broadcast again

And she shared her tactic for dealing with internet trolls – by imagining them as filthy, lonely malcontents that she has dubbed 'Old Mate' and 'Cat Lady'.

Greig was interviewed at the Radio Festival 2014 in Salford on the outskirts of Manchester, the annual conference for radio managers, producers and talent.

She told the 150-strong audience "You do know me as 'the Royal Hoax DJ'. I do have a real name and that's Mel."

She gave a brief outline of her life as a "farm girl" unaware of bullying or the need for regular showers, then as a "teen runaway" and school dropout who went down a "really bad path".

"What brought me back from that was radio," she said, explaining that she now had plenty of experience on-air and as a producer.

She also revealed her strategy for dealing with Twitter trolls.

"You really need to ignore them but that's too hard so I've created two characters that I think of, fictional characters, they're not real – well they probably are real," Greig said.

Male Twitter trolls she pictured as 'Old Mate' – who was "in his 40s, he has a huge beer gut, he wears a singlet, he hasn't been laid in about four years, he's revolting – he's eating a pizza, he's making a mess, he's disgusting."

Female Twitter trolls she called 'Cat Lady' – "she's got 12 cats, she should probably hook up with Old Mate, she hasn't had a shower for a couple of weeks".

"They're not normal," Greig said. "Trolls are not real people, we can't see them as that."

Greig has given a number of interviews in recent weeks – including for Woman's Day in Australia and current affairs program Newsnight in the UK.

It is now almost two years since the prank call she and fellow 2DAY FM host Michael Christian made to the London hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge was being treated for severe morning sickness  - and since the suicide of nurse Jacinta Saldanha who took the call and passed it on to a nurse who was treating the royal.

Greig said she wanted to see if there were lessons that could be learned from her experience, to ensure "a tragedy like this couldn't happen again".

She also wanted to learn about internet bullying so she could pass on her coping strategies to bullied youth.

Her interviewer at the conference, British broadcaster Daisy McAndrew, asked Greig if she was – as people asked on Twitter this week - "playing the victim card, here to rebuild (your) own career".

But Greig said "that's not why I'm here and you'll soon learn that's not why I'm here".

Later in the interview Greig said she had decided she wanted to get back on radio when she was handed the microphone at her engagement party eight months ago.

"I held that microphone (and) realised I did want to return to media," she said. "I held it and felt so comfortable and that's when I thought 'no, this is what I've always known, this is what I've always done', it's such a powerful medium and I don't want to give this up."

"It's a passion it's not a job … it's something that you live and breathe… I could have done those speeches for four hours, I would have had to wrap up my own engagement party."

She would return a 'different' announcer, she said – "wiser, and I think that's a good thing".

She would be happy to move to the UK, she said – she had pictured landing in London like an angry mob scene from the Simpsons "with the pitchforks"

"But it's actually really nice here… it's beautiful here, absolutely I'd love to move here if the option ever came up."

After her conference session Greig told Fairfax that she had not yet received any job offers. "I'm just being patient with it and hoping the right opportunity comes up," she said, saying she loved media in general but her passion was radio.

Greig was accompanied at the conference by a manager from UK network Absolute Radio, however when Fairfax (and then Greig) asked if they would offer her a job he laughed and declined to comment, saying he had to take a phone call.

However, parts of Greig's conference talk sounded like a job pitch - she told the audience that "to ascertain what I've really believed in and what was truly me I've used five words to describe myself: Unique, Passionate, Fun, Honest, and it used to be Fearless … I've replaced that with Strength."

"When you're on air remember your five words and make that your filter," she said.

On the death of Ms Saldanha, Greig said "Jacintha had a very troubled life … we definitely played a part in the stress and the pressure, the prank call, but there were some other things as well."

However, she said it wasn't up to her to reveal the details.

At the official inquest last month in London, Ms Saldanha's husband Benedict Barboza said her death came as a complete surprise – she had never suffered psychiatric problems or depression and had never before attempted self-harm, he told the coroner.

Greig said there were "three hours I don't remember" after the hearing of Ms Saldanha's death and the fact she was being blamed. Her boyfriend stood guard on the balcony of their apartment because "he'd never seen that look in my eye", she said.

"People were saying I deserved to die and I honestly thought 'I do deserve to die'," she said.

She went into 'lockdown' and all she did was read the comments on the internet about her – leading her to believe that everyone in the UK and Australia wanted her to die, or physically attack her.

One online stalker is still harassing her, she said.

The stress triggered endometriosis in early 2013 – and when she was in hospital having surgery she was "convinced (the stalker) would find out I was in hospital and start prank-calling the nurses … I thought nurses would potentially kill themselves if they were harassed because I was in their hospital," she said.

She was convinced that her condition was 'karma'.

"I took a mother('s life), now I don't deserve to be a mother, and I believed that," she said, saying she still struggled with this idea of karmic justice.

For help or information, call Lifeline, 131 114, or visit beyondblue.org.au.