In the end the Sun King just rambled on as might befit someone in his eighty-first year, and thus Rupert Murdoch was finally laid to rest on the Strand – fittingly at the end of Fleet Street where it all began 45 years ago.
On the journey we discovered the man with his hand around the throats of all our political leaders believed that if you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours – but not when it comes to our political leaders. He did them no favours and they did him none.
We discovered he had not really liked the News of the World, the newspaper which brought his empire to crisis, and he wished he had closed it years ago.
We discovered he took all the blame for what has gone wrong but none of the responsibility.
We discovered he was seriously distressed by what had happened and some people were to blame but clearly not those close to him.
As dramatic events go, the (probably) final public appearance of the media mogul who has so dominated parts of British public life was almost embarrassing.
At times, he was almost Alex Ferguson in his replies to charges that he had to accept his part in the scandal tied to his newspapers, but as soon as he flared he failed back into the gaps of someone who has remembered the answer but not the question.
We learned it has cost him hundreds of millions of dollars and it was a serious blot on his reputation.
We learned that son James might have been too inexperienced for the job that an editor of the Sun said he had been drunk all the time he had the job – but nobody noticed and that the Sun was, and is, his pride and joy. What the Sun says is what Rupert thinks. Or maybe the other way round.
We learned too that if he had not taken the print unions, some of the papers doing him down today would not have been able to afford it.
Sadly, or deservedly, he was asked by Lord Leveson to sum up the future of newspapers and he lost his way – maybe just like them.
His many enemies, well earned and well deserved, will have to settle for the demise of the News of the Screws and the evisceration of son James. But they have also been present for the humbling of Rupert Murdoch – and that should be remembered.
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