Sunday Times 2
Blair strongly denies affair with Murdoch’s wife
View(s):Tony Blair was forced to deny internet rumours, 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.
Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng's marriage came less than a month after his divorce from ex-wife Anna Maria Torv Murdoch Mann was finalised.
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 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 Deng and 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 Blair had seen her as a key link in his efforts to woo her politically powerful husband. 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 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 Deng’s behaviour towards her husband.
© Daily Mail, London
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