Wealth Blog | Breathtaking allegations against Wendi Deng

Vanity Fair’s 12-page investigation into the life and times of Rupert Murdoch, 82, and his third wife Wendi Deng, 45, is finally out. It’s a rip-roaring read, with allegations veering from schoolgirl crushes to adultery to bullying behaviour towards staff and what Americans call ”elder abuse.” Never mind unbelievable bad taste. It’s a good old-fashioned hatchet job of the kind Murdoch usually rewards his own reporters richly for. He’s probably not so delighted when the subject is him and his upwardly mobile Chinese bride of 14 years, but hey ho, live by the sword, die by the sword.

I wonder what he thinks of his ex-wife now. They married in 1999 and divorced in November and thanks to a prudent pre-nuptial agreement, the settlement probably cost him less than the US$1.7 billion (HK13.2 billion) he forked out to Anna, his second wife of many decades and mother of Elisabeth, Lachlan and James. He and Deng have two much younger daughters. The Murdoch family fortune is reportedly about US$14 billion.
 

Cringe-making

Vanity Fair somehow dug out what purports to be a “memo to self” by Deng. In gushing girly prose and broken English, she sounds like a fixated teenager, infatuated with, believe it or not, a certain “Tony,” being former British prime minister Tony Blair.
 

Mills and Boon

“Whatever why I’m so so missing Tony,” moons the note, allegedly penned by Deng in fractured English. How anyone could be attracted to Blair is indeed beyond belief. “Because he is so so charming and his clothes are so good. He has such good body and he has really really good legs Butt … 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…”