The Murdoch Touch

All ears are tuned into what will be one of the most dissected and discussed divorce settlements of the year. The players? Rupert and Wendi Murdoch. Rupert is worth $9.4 billion, or £6 billion. The eighty-two year old’s global media portfolio comprises the Wall Street Journal, television channels such as Fox News and Sky, and the 20th Century Fox movie studio. Wife Number Two netted a $1.7 billion settlement. Every Shebug worth her venomous salt is poised to ensnare the media mogul regardless of how much wife number three gets to strut off with.

The label ‘über rich’ is branded on Murdoch’s lined forehead, no matter how many women he joins with in a state of matrimony. The Australian-cum-American, love him or hate him, possesses the Midas Touch: he could lose every last penny and be able to make it back a zillion times over by the time you and I digest the last page of the book The Secret…

A billionaire is at his most vulnerable when he is on the rebound. The tactic that every Shebug of every colour, shape, age, nationality and religion (best strike this last one: they are too deviant to follow the Almighty…) will deploy is the simplest of all. It’s known as come-cry-on-my-shoulder and is as blatant as a baboon’s bum and as transparent as a fly’s wings.

But billions a brain does not maketh, so rest assured Rupert will fall prey to another in no time at all. Wendi Deng knew him for two years and became his wife only two weeks after his second divorce came through.

Wendi originates from a small town in China and moved to America shy of twenty. She met her already married, soon to be ex-husband at a cocktail party in the Far East.

Wendi is clever: she went from setting tables in a California restaurant to securing herself a degree from Yale.

Wendi is tough: the painful thirty-eight year old age gap bothered the forty-four year-old not one iota.

Wendi is quick: when one of Murdoch’s UK newspapers, the News of the World, got caught out phone hacking, the forty-four year old flew out of her chair and slapped a joker who hoped to smear her husband with a pie made of shaving-cream during one of the 2010 televised parliamentary sessions. 

In my exposé, Shebug: Dissecting the Gold Digger, I explain how Shebugs divorced from, or linked to men who possess the Midas Touch, retain a rare  patina of power that excites other industrial titans of note competing for the highest glass tower. Simply think of this as boys and their toys.

Imagine if this undeserved essence could be bottled and sold at the perfume counter!