I recently covered Rupert Murdoch’s divorce –

When he learned that Rupert Murdoch’s fourth marriage didn’t last long enough for him to reach the age of seven, it brought back vivid and somewhat disturbing memories of his previous marriage to the remarkable Wendy Deng.

Why would I have anything in common with Rupert Murdoch’s family issues is the right question and I asked myself at the time.

Murdoch married Deng in June 1999, more than 30 years her junior. In June 2013, when the world learned that the marriage had been established, the hollywood reporter Don’t catch the news at the speed our editor at the time thought was good enough. As he watched the newsroom gather around the conference table that morning, his displeasure lowered the room’s temperature by at least 15 degrees. “How can we continue this story?” I ask. I hardly thought they were expecting an answer. Yes, I covered Murdoch’s business, but not his personal affairs.

To my surprise, his gaze shifted to me. I had no idea where I started. The reasons for the separation were still a mystery, but how could he explain it? However, over the years, I’ve come to realize that much of the Murdoch family’s business was public. They looked like the Kennedys: people from the media world who had never met them called them by name and talked about their lives and family rivalries. I decided to call anyone I knew who had anything to do with Murdoch’s business.

To my surprise, one of the first people I called didn’t hesitate. So this source told me to check my email. A photo of Deng appeared on the screen with Rupert and Tony Blair. At first I didn’t understand the meaning of the image. What did Tony Blair, the former prime minister of England, do? Does Murdoch’s political ally, godfather to one of Rupert’s youngest daughters, Dan, have it?

It wasn’t on many people’s radar, but it turned out that the rumors about Dengue and Blair spread in the media world. Two years earlier, in 2012, author Michael Wolf had tweeted, “Wendy Murdoch and Tony Blair: first heard here,” prompting journalist Jacob Weisberg to tweet, “What do you think? It was so far then.

Because of the gaping gap, my source told me it wasn’t just about Blair. He said that Deng had many close friendships with men. (Rupert was 82 at the time of the split and Deng was 44.) Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and MySpace co-founder Chris Devolph were in attendance.

Given the ease with which I obtained this information, it seemed to me that Rupert had to prove the idea that this information had been passed on to someone in the press. Two things were obvious: we had a story and we had to be euphemistic about it. I was in the midst of the most tabloid reporting of my career.

In a report titled “Wendy Deng Blindly Peting for Divorce (Analysis)”, the sources published a “theory” that the marriage was “strained due to Wendy’s socialization and friendships with men for several years”. Of course, we called Schmidt and DeWolf, who were in the US, but we didn’t get a real answer, although a friend of the Google co-founder told us. THR Schmidt had a romantic relationship with Dan was “suspicious”. (DeWolf later denied that any relationship with Deng was romantic.) It was midnight in London at the time. We asked one of our reporters to call Blair’s office at dawn.

I doubt he enjoyed the task (“Hello. The former prime minister had…you know…?”), but he did. Blair’s spokesman denied any wrongdoing, but he made two mistakes: he didn’t break the record and, more importantly, he used the present tense. “If you ask if they are having an affair, the answer is no,” the spokesperson said. Other outlets instantly took the hay due to word choice.

Penny soon walked into Blair’s office. In short, they threatened us with a lawsuit. Unlikely, since it looked like it would continue, I didn’t like the situation. The defamation laws in England are not good from a reporter’s point of view and being honest may not be enough. It wasn’t without risks, but we held on. We gave Blair the right to offer a total rejection of any relationship.

One year later, vanity fair He published a dirty account of the marriage’s dissolution, revealing a note Deng had written, apparently to himself, that read in part: “…I miss Tony so much. Because she is very charming and her clothes are very good. She has a very good body and very good ass legs. . . And he’s thin and tall and has good skin. The piercing blue eyes I love. Love her eyes. I also love her power on stage. . . And so on and so on. . . The article claims that the comment could have been evidence if the divorce had ended in litigation. There was a lot more detail in the Vanity Fair article, along with a joint statement by Murdoch and Deng: Claim (it is).

With Jerry Hall, Murdoch has found love again, though clearly not as he goes on. I have no idea how he feels about all this at 91, but I know what I feel: pure gratitude that I don’t have to find out what happened this time around.