Tony Blair was forced to deny internet rumours yesterday
linking him with the divorce of Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng.
The internet was awash with unfounded suggestions that the
former PM may have been romantically involved with 44-year-old Miss Deng, who
is a close friend.
The speculation followed a Twitter claim by BBC business
editor Robert Peston – who has close links with News Corporation insiders –
that he had been ‘told that undisclosed
reasons for Murdoch divorcing his third wife are jaw-dropping and hate myself
for wanting to know what they are’.
The rumours are understood to have been emphatically
rejected by Blair aides as untrue and also as highly defamatory.
A spokesman for Mr Blair, 60, told the Hollywood Reporter:
‘If you are asking if they are having an affair, the answer is no.’
The spokesman said the former PM would not be making a
public comment on the divorce himself.
With no explanation forthcoming from the Murdoch camp,
rumours started flying within hours of the news on Thursday that the
82-year-old media tycoon had filed for divorce in a New York court.
It is no secret that Miss Deng and Mr Blair are close
friends. He is godfather to Grace, her oldest child.
Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff described him as ‘one of
Wendi’s first official social conquests’
and suggested that Mr Blair had seen her as a key link in his efforts to woo
her politically powerful husband.
Mr Murdoch, who is estimated to be worth nearly £6billion,
cited as grounds for the divorce ‘that the relationship has broken down
irretrievably’.
Insiders said the 14-year marriage has been strained for
years.
Some pointed to an article in the New York Times last year
in which her friends admitted the Murdochs were living ‘largely separate lives’
as Miss Deng looked after their two children while her husband ran his global
empire.
They reportedly came close to splitting up as long ago as
2006 when she reacted with fury to her husband’s decision that their daughters,
Grace, 11, and Chloe, nine, would not have the same say over the running of the
family business as his children from previous marriages.
Murdoch biographer Neil Chenoweth suggested yesterday that
Mr Murdoch had planned the divorce as long ago as February because the death of
his mother two months earlier gave him extra shares in the family business that
he could use to pay off his wife.
In the same month, observers of the couple at the Oscars saw
a noticeable change in Miss Deng’s behaviour towards her husband.
‘She was snippy with him during the Oscar weekend and she’s
really impatient with him these days,’ a source at the time told Deadline
Hollywood, a film industry website which first reported the divorce.
Michael Wolff recalled reports that Mr Murdoch told his
oldest son, Lachlan, some years ago that he had concluded that marrying the
Chinese-born Miss Deng was a ‘mistake’.
Other sources claimed the
workaholic Mr Murdoch was more concerned wi
th the imminent division of
his media empire into publishing and entertainment arms than with his split
from his wife.
Although the couple have a
pre-nuptial agreement which should ensure that the Murdoch empire is not
affected by the split, their settlement will have to sort out what happens to
their seven homes.
They include a Manhattan apartment Mr Murdoch bought for
£30million, a 16-acre Californian vineyard, a flat in London’s Mayfair, an
11-bedroom house in Beverly Hills and a period house outside the Forbidden City
in Beijing.
The Wall Street Journal reported in 2000 that Miss Deng
helped to cause the break-up of the marriage of an American couple, Jake and
Joyce Cherry, who had befriended her when she was a student.
In 1988, they arranged for Miss Deng, then aged 19, to leave
China for Los Angeles to learn English.
She reportedly ran off with
53-year-old Mr Cherry and later married him, enabling her to get a
‘green card’ to work in the US.
The marriage soon ended after Mr Cherry discovered she was
spending time with a man nearly half his age, said the Journal.
No comments:
Post a Comment