Wendi Deng, better known as Mrs Murdoch, and pie face defender, has revealed in an interview with Vogue magazine that the ex British prime minister, Tony Blair, is the godfather of one of the Murdoch’s daughters. She went as far as to describe Tony as one of her husband’s closest friends.

Mrs Murdoch, 42, rarely gives interviews but she spoke to Vogue to publicise a new film, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, which she has produced.

The story goes that the Murdoch’s nine-year-old daughter, Grace, the second youngest of his six children, was baptised in March last year on the banks of the Jordan, at the spot where Jesus is said to have undergone the same ceremony.

The former Labour prime minister was present at the star-studded baptism, and seems to have gone rather unnoticed and kept a low profile.

A spokesman for Blair last night declined to comment on the godfather link, but a News Corporation spokesperson confirmed it.

This from the Guardian:

Blair’s wooing of Murdoch dates to 1995, when the leader of the opposition provoked a political row by accepting an invitation to address a News Corporation conference on Hayman Island, Australia, in July of that year.

Labour under Neil Kinnock had previously been demonised in Murdoch’s Sun, to the point where some believed the tabloid’s opposition had cost the party the 1992 election.

When Blair opted to attend, he justified the decision to his spokesman, Alastair Campbell, that “not to go was to say carry on and do your worst, and we knew their worst was very bad indeed,” according to his memoirs. “It seems obvious,” he added in his book, A Journey. “The country’s most powerful newspaper proprietor, whose publications have hitherto been rancorous in their opposition to the Labour party, invites us into the lion’s den. You go, don’t you?”

Blair also noted that Paul Keating, then Australia PM, felt Murdoch was “a bastard, but one you could deal with.”

The information was not made public at the time and its disclosure in the interview with will prove highly embarrassing for Mr Blair.

Basically, his close ties to the Murdoch’s could explain his reluctance to condemn the News International phone hacking scandal.

[Source: Guardian]