BEAUTY & THE BEAST!
Murdoch to wed Jagger ex Jerry
FORMER MODEL Jerry Hall didn’t get what she wanted then, but is she now getting what she needs?
The Texas-born stunner is trading in life as the woman Rolling Stone Mick Jagger never married to become the fourth Mrs. Rupert Murdoch.
The November-December couple — she’s 59 to his 84 — made the announcement Monday in The Times of London, which Murdoch owns.
“It’s ridiculous to watch them together. Beauty and the Beast,” said a source familiar with the courtship.
Murdoch is executive chairman at News Corp., which also owns the downmarket New York Post. He has written checks for years to the tune of hundreds of millions to keep the flailing tabloid afloat. Despite his best efforts, the money-losing rag continues to be irrelevant, most say.
“Mr. Rupert Murdoch . . . and Miss Jerry Hall . . . are delighted to announce their engagement,” the London Times announcement read.
The unlikely duo apparently met four months ago and have been dating ever since.
“They have loved these past months together, are thrilled to be getting married and excited about their future,” a Murdoch family rep told the London newspaper.
Others do not so warmly share their bliss.
“They say love is blind,” sniped a Murdoch insider.
According to the London Times, the bald and saggy octogenarian was introduced to the still-statuesque blond in his native Australia by one of his sisters and a niece. The mismatched duo got engaged in Los Angeles over the weekend while in town for the Golden Globes, the report said.
Hall had four children with Jagger. Their 22-year relationship ended in 1999.
Murdoch married Patricia Booker in 1956, but ditched the former flight attendant in 1967. That was the same year he married Anna Maria Mann, a Scottish journalist 15 years his junior who was toiling at one of his newspapers.
He divorced her in June 1999 and 17 days later married the woman his intimates nicknamed “The Gold Digger.”
Wendi Deng, a Chineseborn businesswoman, had worked her way into the upper echelon at Murdoch’s media empire. She solidified her standing as a fierce protector of the family interests in 2011, when she slapped away a pie a comedian threw at her decrepit husband’s head as he testified about a phone hacking scandal at one of his tawdry London tabs. That earned her another moniker: “Crouching Wendi: Hidden Tiger.”
Murdoch dumped Deng in 2013 amid rampant rumors she had fallen in love with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The media mogul suspected the two had an affair and reportedly cut all ties with Blair, a longtime friend who was godfather to the youngest of two girls Murdoch had with Deng.