Rebekah Brooks, the former News International chief, and News of the World editor, is enjoying a sabbatical in Cape Town. Cutting a notably different appearance from the fiery redhead we’re used to, the media mogul has been escaping the phone hacking and corruption scandal that’s followed her around for months.

Brooks is in Cape Town with her husband, Charlie, a racehorse trainer, and they have been doing all the touristy things.

Friends have also accompanied the two parents-to-be, who jetted in just before New Year, as they took in views of the Atlantic and just generally enjoyed the awesomeness of Cape Town at this time of year.

They’ve been to the craft market at the Waterfront, caught the ferry to Robben Island, seen the lighthouse at Cape Point and even gone to see the penguins at Boulders Beach.

News of the World was shut down when the scandal of a newspaper rife with allegations of phone hacking and corruption got too much for Rupert Murdoch to defend.

Brooks received a whopping £1,7 million compensation package and a chauffeur-driven limousine in a controversial pay-off deal from Murdoch, but it’s expected she could re-join Murdoch’s empire in less than two years once the scandal subsides.

After publicly apologising at a humbling appearance before a Parliamentary Committee inquiry into phone hacking, ex-News of the World journalist Paul McMullan, publicly branded her “scum”.

He told the inquiry that Brooks was fully aware that phone hacking was going on when she was editor of the newspaper.

A 3 000 word profile in this month’s US edition of Vanity Fair continues to paint the illicit outline of a sordid character we have come to read about more often than not.

She has supposedly “reappeared on the dinner circuit” where friends see her as one of the “victims” of the scandal and that she will actively be  restoring her public image by doing various philanthropic work, including a charity event next month.

Brooks is still out on police bail following her arrest on July 15 last year, but that hasn’t stopped her from embracing the notion that “work is a sideline, live the holiday”.

[Thanks, Jonty F]

[Source: DailyMail]