Friends have confirmed what is surely the globe’s most improbable match: Texan model Jerry Hall, 59, and media mogul Rupert Murdoch, 84.
The pairing of the brilliant and ruthless businessman and the charming social butterfly best known for putting up with Mick Jagger’s infidelities, is certainly surprising.
However, it seems they have been together for several weeks, after being introduced by one of his sisters and his niece.
A source said: ‘He is very happy, and she makes him laugh.’
The story, broken by The Mail On Sunday, immediately went round the world and was later reported by Murdoch’s own newspaper, The Sunday Times.
In many respects, Murdoch is not Hall’s type.
She likes younger men — such as previous boyfriends George Waud (a film producer) and banker-about-town Tim Attias. She likes obviously handsome men, such as her most recent squeeze, the scientist Armand Leroi, 51.
She likes men with a lot of charisma, such as Jagger. She also prefers them to be cultured (art and ballet are her specialities) — someone she can introduce to her social circle, which includes the playwright Tom Stoppard.
How Murdoch, for so long a bogeyman of the Left and the arts world, will be received in such salons is a deliciously open question.
Indeed, a friend says: ‘If you had said Jerry was dating [the gay actor] Rupert Everett, I would have been less surprised!’
What’s more, it is widely believed in showbiz circles that despite their split 16 years ago, Jerry still harbours a deep affection for Jagger, which is one reason she has never married anyone else — although it is pointed out that if she did, she would probably have to forfeit her magnificent home in Richmond, Surrey.
The truth, though, is that one crucial aspect of her romance with Murdoch should not be a surprise: most of Jerry’s serious relationships have been with men who are millionaires at least.
Just as she has stuck to a trademark look — long blonde hair over one eye and red lipstick — so she has always favoured a trademark man. Moneyed.
Jagger was already wealthy when their paths first crossed in 1976. The Rolling Stone is now worth around £230 million, but Murdoch is in a different class, with a fortune estimated at £8.1 billion.
The tycoon has been married three times — first to Patricia Booker, a former flight attendant from Melbourne, and then to Glasgow-born journalist Anna. His adult children have followed him into TV, newspapers and film.
He was profoundly hurt over his break-up with third wife Wendi Deng — and was furious with Tony Blair for seeing Deng in his home without his knowledge.
‘Above all, Jerry craves security,’ I am told. ‘She likes to feel that she is going to be taken care of by a man — which perhaps comes from being raised dirt-poor in Texas.’
She has said that her alcoholic dad beat her and her four sisters so viciously he ‘broke bones’.
Certainly, she loved the security of having five homes and a retinue of staff when with Jagger. It’s not that she is a gold-digger, but simply that she prefers it if a man is rich.
And so her first boyfriend after splitting with Jagger was billionaire Microsoft founder Paul Allen, who invited her to holiday with him on his mega-yacht around the South of France.
Similarly, her only affair during the Jagger period was with racehorse owner Robert Sangster — a tax exile millionaire whom Jerry was using in an attempt to make Jagger jealous.
Waspishly, the model crowed at the time: ‘Robert can buy out Mick ten times over.’
Perhaps the fact that Professor Armand Leroi, the son of Dutch diplomats, did not have a lot of money might have been a factor in the end of their romance this summer.
The author, broadcaster and professor of evolutionary developmental biology at Imperial College in London had charmed her four children, and during their year-long liaison Jerry had gushed: ‘He is lovely and clever and very handsome. I am really, really happy.’
Before Leroi, she enjoyed an intense romance with millionaire property tycoon Warwick Hemsley. However, it foundered on the fact that he was based in Australia and Jerry could not travel to be with him enough to sustain the romance.
She has called their two years together the happiest of her life, though, and described that time as ‘peaceful and non-dramatic’, adding: ‘I think I’m so lucky at my stage in life to have found someone so lovely, and to love and feel loved. It’s a beautiful thing.’
So why have none of Jerry’s post-Jagger romances gone the distance? In an interview two months ago, she said she does still hope to find the man of her dreams.
‘I’d like to settle down with someone. There’s nothing nicer than someone who is loving and caring.
‘Getting married again is a nice idea. Actually, I don’t think you’d need to get married: it’s the company that would be nice. But I haven’t met the right person to get married to since my divorce from Mick.’
It does seem that her abiding love of Jagger has prevented her from fully moving on. Indeed, she once admitted: ‘Of course I still love him. How can you un-love?’
What’s more, three years ago she said that Jagger had been ‘quite easy to live with — except for the infidelity’ and revealed: ‘We’re very good friends now. He calls most days. He’s so funny.’
For his part, Jagger’s world was turned upside down last year with the suicide of his long-term girlfriend L’Wren Scott. At Christmas, Jerry had him as a guest in Richmond for most of the festive period.
Jagger has been invited again this Christmas. His romance with ballerina Melanie Hamrick is said to be ‘sporadic’, and Jerry wouldn’t dream of him being alone, despite the fact that he cheated on her brazenly.
The Stone continues to appreciate Jerry’s counsel on everything relating to their children, and she is very much the matriarch of the family. Gabriel,18, the youngest of their children, still lives with her in Richmond, and Jerry is much involved with the modelling career of daughter Georgia, 23. Son James, 30, lives in New York, as does daughter Lizzie, 31. Meanwhile, Jade Jagger, her stepchild, adores her.
Despite their separation, Jagger and Jerry have managed to hang on to much of what made their relationship tick in the first place.
She is, for instance, one of the few people who gets on well with Rolling Stone drummer Charlie Watts, while Keith Richards regards her as family (or, as he puts it, ‘blood’) — an essential member of the Rolling Stones team.
Jerry has had a long time to look back and analyse her relationship with Jagger. She was very hurt to discover that their Hindu wedding ceremony, performed on a beach in Bali in 1990, was not legally valid.
And while forgiving of many of his sexual liaisons, she was very wounded by his dalliance with model Carla Bruni — while she was pregnant with Georgia.
The final straw came when he got Brazilian model Luciana Morad pregnant, and they split in 1999. Jagger ended up giving her around £10 million — but none of his many properties.
Jerry was allowed to stay on in the 26-room Downe House in Richmond but it remained a mutual asset.
It has been suggested that Jagger’s lawyers put a complex series of conditions around Jerry continuing to stay there, and it was reported that if she got married or cohabited with a man, she would have to leave.
In 2010, Jerry asked him to sign Downe House over to her but he declined. Jerry, ever-forgiving, has simply continued to work on stage, as a writer, and on television.
But now that she has a stupendously more wealthy boyfriend, such problems over bricks and mortar may become irrelevant.
Certainly, her new relationship will have grabbed Jagger’s attention — although it will amuse him rather than provoke him.
Will the romance last?
Not surprisingly, Jerry is a little cynical about men. As she told an interviewer three years ago, men will come and go in her life.
‘They’re The One … then they’re The One before The One,’ she said.
© Daily Mail