Succession is ending at just the wrong time – Rupert Murdoch makes satire easy

One might indeed wonder what Ann Lesley Smith sees in the billionaire Rupert Murdoch she has just got engaged to

In principle it doesn’t sit well to mercilessly take the mickey out of a 92-year-old, does it? But when the nonagenarian in question is Rupert Murdoch, in charge of a vast media organisation that can destroy the reputation of anyone who he doesn’t like on a whim (and has gleefully done so), I reckon the old sod can still look after himself.

As you might have noticed, the Dirty Digger (as we still know him in Fleet Street) is getting married again. For the fifth time, unless there are any other “secret brides” lurking around. The lucky lady is Ann Lesley Smith. Her Wikipedia entry has her born in “1956 or 1957” and describes her as “an American journalist and former prison chaplain, dental hygienist, model, and singer-songwriter.” So – without being indelicate – well-suited to Rupes on a variety of levels.

Like many of his business deals, and intentionally or not, the latest chapter in Murdoch's life is delivered with impeccable timing. Now that the smash hit HBO series Succession has announced its own demise, at least the ever-growing Murdoch family/families will be spared the indignity of his latest liaison being vaguely satirised on television.

That doesn't mean, though, that the forthcoming nuptials aren't capable of being lampooned elsewhere: perhaps a little unkindly one of Murdoch's better-known former editors, Kelvin MacKenzie, saw fit to despatch this disrespectful Tweet: “’I dreaded falling in love’. The words of Rupert Murdoch announcing at 91 (sic) he was to marry for the fifth time to a widow of 66. Those who don't share his dread are his divorce lawyers... and anybody in the US wedding cake business."

An example, there, of the loyalty Murdoch so often inspires in others.

With Anna, and not for the first time with Murdoch, I’m reminded of one of that great line of the much-missed Caroline Aherne. Dressed up as her alter ego, Mrs Merton, an unusually direct chat show host, she once interviewed Debbie McGee, and memorably asked her: “So, what first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?”

Given that these days Murdoch looks like a shaved worm, and seems to have few other redeeming features, one might indeed wonder what Anna sees in the billionaire Rupert Murdoch. Love, though, has its reasons, and there’s no reason (or at least not within the scope of modern geriatric care) why the couple can’t enjoy a long and happy marriage.

I’m also intrigued by the age gap between the couple. Again, nothing wrong with that, but the nerd in me feels the need to see how it’s adjusted over time, and the five-times wed Murdoch provides a decently sized dataset.

Some data is a little fuzzy, but the basic picture is clear; he’s always favoured a younger Shiela. His first marriage, to an air hostess, was in 1956 when he was 25 and Patricia Booker was 18. Then came the long-serving Anna Maria Torv when he was 36, and the gap widened to 13 years.

Next up is the famous-in-her-own-right Wendi Deng, TV reporter and an employee of his, who was 31 when she married him in 1999. That coupling yielded a personal best record for Rupert, of a bride some 37 years his junior. Leggy Jerry Hall took the plunge in 2016, when she was a full quarter-century younger than her groom. The gap with Smith is about the same, roughly 26 years.

Statistically, the age gap has always been large to ridiculous, but with someone like Murdoch you have to adjust things, because after all a 37-year-old man old man cannot marry someone not yet even born.

Looking at things proportionately, and at the marital age gap as a percentage of Murdoch’s age at time of betrothal, we get this run of data: 28 per cent; 39 per cent; 54 per cent (Deng, again the peak); 29 per cent and 28 per cent for fiancee Smith. There are probably other adjustments to make, but it doesn’t feel worth it.

Having said all that, and suppressing some mild distaste, you must concede that Smith, like the others, is no child bride. Nor can you say, at 66 or so, that she’s naive about the ways of the world. If I were writing for the features sections of one of Murdoch’s many, many titles I’d be inclined to write the engagement up as a celebration of old age, proof that age is just a number, and take inspiration for how love can blossom even on the most wizened on boughs. But I’m not, so I haven’t.