At last, some happy news. Rupert Murdoch is engaged – and for the second time in less than a year. I know! Despite being 93 next Monday, he’s getting engaged even more frequently than serial sex killers serving life sentences. Those betrothals, of course, tend to happen entirely by letter, but as far as we know, Murdoch’s latest love match is a real-world union. His fiancee is Elena Zhukova, 67, a retired biologist who also previously served as mother-in-law to Roman Abramovich. In the absence of an official engagement photo, just sub in that image from Alien 3 where the slavering alien corners Ripley in the infirmary. And please remember – the Fox News chairman emeritus’s lifelong commitment to irreverent stories about people’s private lives means the above is precisely how he wants his latest chapter to be covered.
As mentioned, this is Murdoch’s second proposal inside 12 months, his previous engagement enduring just a fortnight. Hand on heart, I was surprised he couldn’t make it work with that last one, a former dental hygienist/evangelical prison chaplain he met in one of his gardens, who had successfully dismissed a case of “financial elder abuse” brought by one of her previous stepchildren. She seemed so perfect. Back at the time they announced their intention to wed (not hugely long after Rupert reportedly told Jerry Hall via email that he was divorcing her), he gibbered out some hilarious interview to his own New York Post, in which he claimed: “I dreaded falling in love – but I knew this would be my last.”
And yet Murdoch has now faced those fears not once but twice – and all in less than half the TV broadcast lifespan of his disastrous TalkTV channel, which this week announced it was moving to online only. (Something about being “brave”, which felt quite “brave” in itself, given the calamitous rating circumstances.)
So what do we know of this new love match? One of these most recent fiancees was 66, while this latest is 67, suggesting that Murdoch’s current romantic sweet spot is around the age of his eldest daughter (66). Perhaps mindful of a potential clash with the still-unscheduled nuptials of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez, he and Zhukova have announced their wedding will take place in June. The location will be Rupert’s Moraga vineyard in California, which is the same one Jerry Hall says he made her do a 500-hour online winemaking course for, so he could write off $3m in expenses. I wonder if he ever put his finger on why that last marriage didn’t work out? Perhaps there were clues in the CCTV images from her home that continued to be beamed back to Fox HQ after their split, until Mick Jagger’s security team dismantled the cameras.
Anyway, all ancient history now. And clearly, the next Mrs Murdoch has already pulled off a superior tactical manoeuvre to his last fiancee, who was scheduled to marry him at the less optimal age of 92. God forbid this engagement falls apart too, but if it does, current rate of acquisition would suggest a next fiancee could pick up Murdoch at the even more desirable vintage of 94. Wife number seven or eight would expect to hit sometime around the 100 mark. In some ways, the dream.
But on now to how the happy couple met. According to the Daily Mail, which last August broke the news of their romance, they were introduced by Murdoch’s last but one wife, Wendi Deng. Murdoch remaining friends with Wendi feels quite the shakedown, given one detail of the Vanity Fair article that came out last spring. In this epic tale of messy billionairedom, covering the past few years of upheaval in his family and business empire, there was an episode where Murdoch had a fall which – to cut a long and absolutely batshit story short – eventually saw him medevac-ed from a Guadeloupe superyachting mishap to LA. There, doctors examining his X-ray discovered he had not only broken his back, but had also previously fractured vertebrae. As the magazine elaborated: “Murdoch explained it must have been from the time his ex-wife Deng pushed him into a piano during a fight. (Ms Deng did not respond to requests for comment.)”
Righto. We don’t know whether Ms Deng responded to requests to source her ex a new wife – she could just be a self-starter with initiative to burn – but it’s good the former couple were able to put the piano spinal behind them. As for what caused the instrument to become caught up in one of their fights … Speaking purely speculatively, perhaps it was just nearby when Rupert was confronting Wendi over an earlier Vanity Fair article, in which two notes reportedly written by Deng were reproduced. One concerned former Google CEO Eric Schmidt; the other our own Mr Tony Blair. “Oh shit, oh shit,” ran this latter one. “Whatever why I’m so missing Tony. Because he is so charming and his clothes are so good. He has such good body and he has really really good legs Butt … [sic; it’s all sic] And he is slim tall and good skin. Pierce blue eyes which I love. Love his eyes. Also I love his power on the stage … and what else and what else and what else …”
Such very funny people, and miles more entertaining than most of the ones you’re allowed to read about in his newspapers. Indeed, now he’s retired/meat-puppeting his son Lachlan from the vineyard C-suite, perhaps Rupert is asking himself “and what else and what else and what else”. Could he not at least consider writing a dating book for mortals, in which he shares his increasingly mesmerising romantic secrets?
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
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