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IF YOU’RE looking for a way to ensure you are regarded as beyond the pale by polite society, here’s one fail-safe method: say something nice about Rupert Murdoch. I did just that on Question a few years ago. Indeed, I went further: I said he was one of the most admirable figures of the past 50 years.

The look on my fellow panellists’ faces will always remain with me — a sort of bewildered horror, as if they had just witnessed something both incomprehensible and disgusting.

But while the caricature Murdoch induces apoplexy in so many minds, the real Murdoch is a man who has done more to democratise news, sport and leisure than any of his opponents.

Take Sky News, which was revolutionary when it started but has transformed how every news organisation operates. Indeed, take Sky itself, which changed the broadcasting landscape, not least in how sport moved from being an occasional treat, confined mainly to Grandstand,

and some recorded evening highlights, to full and constant coverage of almost every conceivable sporting activity.

Or which Murdoch has for many years not merely propped up but lavished with care. And, yes, the Sun — sneeringly dismissed by bien pensants but a newspaper of genius in the way it presents stories with flair and accuracy.

Murdoch might be regarded as the devil incarnate to some, but to anyone with an open mind he is one of the most compelling and fascinating figures of our time.

Which is why