Daughter Elisabeth, a year younger than Rebekah Brooks and almost as tough, is understood to have fulminated at her handling of the scandal, telling friends that Mrs Brooks had ‘f*****’ the company

Daughter Elisabeth, a year younger than Rebekah Brooks and almost as tough, is understood to have fulminated at her handling of the scandal, telling friends that Mrs Brooks had ‘f*****’ the company. And last month when Murdoch’s young and glamorous third wife Wendi failed to turn up at his summer party at London’s Kensington Gardens, friends murmured darkly that it was ‘because Rebekah will be there’.

But then observers believe Rebekah Brooks’s remarkably swift rise in the company was due not so much to her talents as a journalist but to her single-minded ruthlessness and her dazzling, feline ability to charm. ‘Rebekah schmoozes in one direction only — up,’ says one of her oldest acquaintances. ‘I don’t know anyone who is better at love-bombing, when it matters. I wouldn’t think Rupert stood a chance.’


 Rebekah Brooks and Rupert Murdoch have a very close relationship, leading to even Murdoch's wife Wendi avoiding functions that she attends

She and Murdoch went for swims together, they sailed together. When a surprised colleague asked: ‘Who sails?’ she replied simply: ‘The Murdochs.’ She talked to Murdoch every day. When he walked into a room at a business or social gathering, she was at his side.

‘It’s always been obvious that he feels like a father figure to her,’ says one of his circle. At social functions she was his ‘part nurse, part protector,’ says one of the circle. ‘On one occasion, I even heard her asking him: “Have you taken your pills, Rupert?”’

‘She watches over him and makes sure he is comfortable with whoever he’s talking to; making sure his glass is filled. Rupert’s not young any more, and it was clear that the older he got the more he relied on her. She made herself indispensable.’

But then, being indispensable was her speciality — during her years as editor of the News of the World and The Sun, she made herself indispensable to Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron, in turn. She went to their parties and they certainly made sure they went to hers.

No one could say that Rebekah Brooks did not live up to a reputation which, frankly, scared even powerful men — not to mention the staff who remember her, as an editor, demanding they do ‘whatever it takes’ to bring in exclusive stories.


Former friends: In 2008, Rebekah Brooks and Elisabeth Murdoch remained friends, pictured here at a lunch for women in business at 10 Downing Street

And how she loved the high-level friendships: chatting with Prince Charles; slipping into the royal box at Wimbledon last month; arriving at Glastonbury by helicopter. But most of all, said one close figure, ‘she loved to feel that she was feared’. Rebekah herself sometimes felt her life was surreal. There is certainly a sense of unreality in her Who’s Who entry.

While she lists being educated at the Sorbonne, in fact she merely took a short course there — not a degree — while working for an architecture magazine in Paris after her A-levels. When she returned from Paris, she got a job as a secretary in the features department of the Post, Eddy Shah’s short-lived tabloid.

Her next job was on the News of the World, also as a secretary. Just 20 at the time, she soon caught editor Piers Morgan’s attention and was promoted to features writer. The high-octane approach of the sharp-eyed girl with tumbling, Rapunzel red hair had also caught Rupert Murdoch’s eye, and at the age of 29 she was made deputy editor of the Sun.


Elisabeth Murdoch, far left, invited Brooks, third from left and then editor of NotW, to join her on her hen night

The following year she was dismayed to be passed over when the editorship changed hands, but in 2000 Murdoch gave her the editorship of the News of the World.

And finally, in 2003, she got the job she really wanted — editorship of The Sun. For the staff it was the start of much shouting and stress.

At the time she was married to EastEnders hard-man, actor Ross Kemp, and there was a curious episode when the couple apparently had a fight and she was arrested.  When Murdoch heard she was in police cells, he arranged for a designer suit to be taken to her so that when she emerged in the morning, she would be looking her best for the inevitable cameras. That night he took her out to dinner.

He elevated her to chief executive in 2009, the year that she and Kemp were divorced. The same year she married former jockey and racing trainer Charlie Brooks.

Lewis Carroll’s fictional Alice woke up just before the queen’s command ‘Off with her head!’ could be carried out. Rebekah Brooks had no such lucky escape.