When he was a schoolboy, Rupert Murdoch supplemented his pocket money by catching water rats and selling their skins at sixpence a time. His other wheeze was to collect horse manure from the Murdoch family’s paddocks, put it in bags and sell it to neighbours for their gardens.

William Shawcross cites these enterprises as proof of the lad’s ‘business flair’, without noticing quite how appropriate they are for a man who went on to found an empire built on rats and filth. Today, the Dirty Digger earns his millions from, inter alia, the following: Fox TV, a vulgar