Rupert Was Humble, But Wendi Hit Back

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1:01pm UK, Wednesday July 20, 2011

Jon Craig, chief political correspondent

We should have known when she entered the room with her 80-year-old husband that Wendi Deng would be the star of the show.

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In the past, she has stayed out of the limelight. But not now.
Wearing a bright pink jacket and black skirt, at the start of the hearing she examined the label on the bottle of House of Commons mineral water - checking it for poison, perhaps? - and then poured Rupert a glass.
In nearly 30 years covering select committees, I've never seen a witness so grand that they brought their own water pourer!
Throughout her husband's evidence, she sat directly behind her husband with her hands clasped together on her slim knees and when he banged the table animatedly while answering Tom Watson's questions, she learned forward in case he injured himself.
Nearly two-and-a-half hours into the hearing, a man calling himself Jonny Marbles - who had clearly lost his - leapt towards Mr Murdoch from his right-hand side, brandishing a paper plate with shaving foam on it, to make it look like a custard pie.
But Wendi was too quick for him.

The protester threw a plate of shaving foam over Mr Murdoch

She leapt forward and appeared to clout her husband's assailant and prevented a much more serious incident.
After chairman John Whittingdale suspended the hearing as police bundled the attacker away and out of the room, MPs on the committee praised Wendi's swift and brave action.
"She was brilliant," one member of the committee told me. "You don't mess with Wendi, clearly!"
But yet another breach of Commons security will no doubt lead to more restrictions on journalists and members of the public attending proceedings in Parliament.
After the break and after Marbles was taken away from Portcullis House to Parliament's scruffy little cell underneath the House of Commons, Murdoch senior re-appeared in his shirtsleeves.
Until the rumpus the highlight of Rupert's grilling, for me, was his amusing anecdote about how he sneaked into 10 Downing Street through the back door just a few days after David Cameron became Prime Minister.

Mr Murdoch said it was the 'most humble day' of his life

"I was invited, within days, to have a cup of tea to be thanked for the support by Mr Cameron," he blurted out to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee of MPs.
No! So it was "The Sun wot won it", after all!
But why did Rupert go in by the back door, the MPs asked.
"I just did what I was told," he said sheepishly. Apparently, No 10 did not want him to be seen by photographers and TV crews, he admitted.
"Wow! Thanks, Rupert!" I can imagine Mr Cameron screaming, when he was given that little gem of information on board his flight - bumpy, I imagine - from his curtailed African trip back to the UK.

James Murdoch: Certain Legal Fees Were Paid For Mulcaire

Back inside No 10, I can also imagine members of team Cameron throwing the china cups at the wall.
But the 'Thank You' cuppa in No 10 was one of many gems from the 80-year-old media legend in the course of his marathon evidence session alongside his son James.
It was a session where he said little at first, apart from declare: "This is the most humble day of my life."
He seemed to warm up, gradually, and by the end, when he started to talk emotionally about his pride about his father, we was positively relaxed.
Rupert's little gems included declaring he had never heard of Neville Thurlbeck, former chief reporter of the News Of The World, he said.
What a crushing blow for poor Neville after a long career on Murdoch papers.

He claimed he spends more time talking to the editor of the Wall Street Journal than his "very seldom" chats with those of his UK newspapers.
A morale blow for Fleet Street's finest too, perhaps?
But I wasn't surprised to hear that. After all, he did give the WSJ his first interview on the hacking scandal a few days ago.
These disclosures prompted MPs on the committee to put it to Murdoch senior that he had a "hands off" approach to his papers while the phone hacking storm was escalating.
"It's revealing what he doesn't know and what his executives chose to tell him," said an apparently frustrated Tom Watson after attempting a forensic cross-examination of Murdoch senior without much success.
"You've been kept in the dark," the veteran Labour MP Alan Keen told him towards the end of his evidence.

Brooks: NOTW Employed Private Detectives

Not so, Rupert insisted. Not kept in the dark, just a "bit lax", he said before James intervened to put his gloss on his father's admission.
Throughout what must have been a pretty gruelling experience for an 80-year-old, even before the attack, Murdoch senior's chief protecter was his son James.
Where Rupert was brusque, to the point, pithy and occasionally amusing, James was the consummate slick PR man, intervening to finesse his father's answers and acting almost as if he was his father's spin doctor.
"I understand completely your frustration about this," he told one MP after persistent questioning about who knew what and when.
James also said how much the company welcomed the Prime Minister's judicial inquiry. I'm sure. Like you look forward to a visit to the dentist!
Clearly, this irritated some members of the committee. "Mr Murdoch senior, I seem to be getting further with you," Tory MP Philip Davies said at one point.

Stephenson: Media and Met changes needed

Compared with the drama of the Murdoch attack, Rebekah Brooks' evidence was low key and the seats behind her were almost empty.
No sign of disgruntled former News Of The World journalists lined up with fake custard pie.
But by then the corridor outside the Wilson Room in Portcullis House was full of large, burly police officers. Pity they hadn't been more vigilant earlier.
Earlier, as the warm-up acts for the Murdochs, we witnessed senior police officers in the dock, as former Met chief Sir Paul Stephenson, PR boss Dick Fedorcio and "Yates of the Yards", John Yates, appeared before the Home Affairs Select Committee.
In his flat Lancashire vowels, Sir Paul was full of remorse of his Champney's blunder and the Neil Wallis gaffe.
But he also dropped Mr Cameron and No 10 right in the brown stuff by revealing that a senior Downing Street official - whom Mr Yates later confirmed was the PM's chief of staff Ed Llewellyn - failed to pass on warnings about Mr Wallis to the Prime Minister.

Yates: There was no evidence against Wallis

No doubt more china cups hit the wall in No 10 when that gem was unearthed!
Mr Fedorcio, I have to report, since I've had dealings with him and always found him a thoroughly decent and convivial sort, was deeply unimpressive, vague and waffly.
It was difficult to disagree with committee chairman Keith Vaz at the end of his evidence when he said: "I'm not sure if we're any clearer."
And Mr Yates? Grumpy, out-of-a-job Yates, the one-time high-flyer tipped for the top job?
Dismissing The Guardian report on which he failed to act back in 2009, he said contemptuously: "This was not a body being found. It was an article in a newspaper."
Maybe. But an article in a newspaper that has now brought us to a scandal to rival Profumo, which broke exactly 50 years ago and brought down a Conservative government.
Quizzed about his friendship with Mr Wallis, he admitted he had been to his house once, to pick him up on the way to a football match. What an own goal!
I don't know which is more embarrassing: a top cop going to a football match with an ex-NOTW hacking suspect who was on the Met's payroll…
Or a media baron admitted he went into No 10 by the back door to be thanked by the Prime Minister for his support in an election.
How Mr Cameron must wish he had a Wendi to leap to his defence!