Congratulations, Rupert Murdoch! Let’s hope this love match lasts longer than TalkTV | Marina Hyde

This is the media mogul's second proposal in 12 months. Us mortals can only speculate about his mesmerising dating secrets

At last, some happy news. Rupert Murdoch is engaged - and for the second time in less than a year. I know! Despite being 93 next Monday, he's getting engaged even more frequently than serial sex killers serving life sentences. Those betrothals, of course, tend to happen entirely by letter, but as far as we know, Murdoch's latest love match is a real-world union. His fiancee is Elena Zhukova, 67, a retired biologist who also previously served as mother-in-law to Roman Abramovich. In the absence of an official engagement photo, just sub in that image from Alien 3 where the slavering alien corners Ripley in the infirmary. And please remember - the Fox News chairman emeritus's lifelong commitment to irreverent stories about people's private lives means the above is precisely how he wants his latest chapter to be covered.

As mentioned, this is Murdoch's second proposal inside 12 months, his previous engagement enduring just a fortnight. Hand on heart, I was surprised he couldn't make it work with that last one, a former dental hygienist/evangelical prison chaplain he met in one of his gardens, who had successfully dismissed a case of financial elder abuse" brought by one of her previous stepchildren. She seemed so perfect. Back at the time they announced their intention to wed (not hugely long after Rupert reportedly told Jerry Hall via email that he was divorcing her), he gibbered out some hilarious interview to his own New York Post, in which he claimed: I dreaded falling in love - but I knew this would be my last."

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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