Delightful photos of Rupert Murdoch and his latest girlfriend, Elena Zhukova, contribute so much to our understanding of human age-assortative mating that the couple will understand the enthusiasm for closer study of their courtship before it’s too late. For a 92-year-old who recently embarked, he said, on the “second half” of his life, Murdoch’s romantic life looks unleisurely.
An engagement to Ann Lesley Smith, for instance, was called off after two weeks, before anyone could figure out what led to this particular mate choice. Academics studying age-assortative pairing in migrating birds, such as the pied flycatcher, probably face the same sort of problem.
Should Murdoch – or Zhukova – move on quickly, we might, however, learn even more about the uncanny accuracy with which Murdoch seems able to pinpoint amenable partners aged 66 or 67. Could such consistency be random, as opposed to a deliberate mating practice? His third ex-wife, Wendi Deng, reportedly introduced him, “at a large family gathering”, to Zhukova, a molecular biologist and the ex-wife of one Russian oligarch and former mother-in-law, via her daughter Dasha, of another, the now-sanctioned Roman Abramovich. Zhukova is 66. Smith was 66. Murdoch’s latest ex-wife, Jerry Hall, is 67.
Is it premature to theorise that an age gap of 26 years has been identified, chez Murdoch, as an ideal compromise, one that somewhat indulges the male preference for women in their mid-20s but does not threaten family succession, or appear (if you’re not 92 or 66) outstandingly grotesque?
To judge by twinkling media comment on Murdoch’s romantic success, extreme male reluctance to court their own generation is still normalised. Last week’s must be the most sympathetic publicity since he announced his love for Smith, back in March, and, before that, for Hall, unexpectedly discharged in 2022. While, at the same time, holiday photographs of the Macrons revived commentary on their (24-year) age gap, the slightly greater one between Zhukova and Murdoch appeared unproblematic, especially since, someone terrifyingly stressed, he possesses the “energy of people half his age”. That partners closer in age are associated with advancing equality between the sexes seems to have had as little impact on UK age gap reporting as its corollary: the connection between age hypergamy (the classic Boris/Carrie, where the man is older) and sexual inequality and patriarchy.
For any woman clinging, as I am, to Murdoch’s currently acceptable demographic, the message is, you might think, chilling. However otherwise independent, we would be considered blessed if, like Zhukova, we attracted the notice of a very old, infirm-looking male whose latest younger wife reportedly nursed him back to health before being dumped for her pains. In just a few years, even with all our own teeth, we would be lucky to appeal to a Captain Tom.
In fact, compared with the general admiration for Murdoch’s uninterest – unless he’s yet to meet the right 92-year-old – in women within a quarter century of his own age, Chaucer, writing around 1387, showed greater awareness that a Januarie/May arrangement might have its flaws. “The slakke skyn aboute his nekke shaketh” goes one detail in The Merchant’s Tale, when the old husband, Januarie, newly married to May, cavorts ecstatically in his nightshirt. “But God woot what that May thoughte… “
In The Murdoch’s Tale, the old man’s material and holidaying offer is admittedly superior. For a mature media studies student, his courtship could be, moreover, a research boon. Imagine kissing the actual person from James Graham’s Ink, the inspiration for Logan Roy, the entrepreneur who, as chronicled in Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie’s wonderful Stick It Up Your Punter!, introduced the Sun’s 70s readership to sex hints: “Always make love with the light on.” Well, at least until you’re 66.
Time travel aside, if you are starving and have the required birth certificate, you could hardly do better than Murdoch, number 99 on the Forbes billionaire list with a family recently valued at $17.2bn. None of which can matter to Zhukova, most recent winner of Murdoch’s heart. Or whatever he has had installed in that capacity. Back in 1982 – Murdoch would have been a youngster of 51 – one of his editors, the late Harry Evans, told a friend: “He’s had his heart removed long ago, together with all his moral faculties and his human sensibility.”
Apologies to Zhukova for the scrutiny but, as she may have gathered from tabloid coverage of her daughter’s 2017 separation from Abramovich, the UK press has never been quite the same since her boyfriend arrived – not even after the Leveson inquiry, convened following phone hacking at his papers.
Earlier this summer Prince Harry, who accuses the Sun of seeking private information about his wife, the Duchess of Sussex, won permission to take lawsuits against Murdoch to trial. The paper had already apologised for a column Zhukova may have missed, in which Jeremy Clarkson said he was “dreaming of the day when [Meghan] is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while crowds chant, ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her”.
That it can’t be Murdoch’s wealth makes it even harder to imagine what, to paraphrase Mrs Merton, first attracted Zhukova to the Fox News magnate, whose unlovely reputation has recently suffered the further shock of the $787.5m settlement resulting from false Fox News claims about Trump’s election defeat. Perhaps there are shared interests, in the face of which 26 years simply vanish away?
“It was the usual, normal Moscow intelligentsia,” Zhukova once said about her life in early 80s Russia. In the UK, her current partner’s Sun, already “a tearaway paper with lots of tits in it”, was gearing up for the headline “Do you seriously want this old man to run Britain?”. Michael Foot was, at the time, 22 years younger than is Rupert Murdoch.
It must be love.
• Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist
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