"Because that man Murdoch is the one who, if I had the time . . . I've got too much writing to do . . . I would shoot the bugger if I could."

That was 12 years ago. Murdoch had, by then, already lowered standards and taste in Britain through his newspaper interests, and he was on his way to commodifying football with his TV channel, Sky. He openly admitted that he used sport as a battering ram to get into new markets. Sky is a flying success, but many fear for the English Premiership, which has become Murdoch's tool, and may not have a great future whenever he deems it surplus to demands.

Last week, the 75-year-old mogul was in the news for the two aspects to his professional life that have marked his ascent to the pinnacle of transglobal commerce. In Britain, he made an audacious attempt to merge NTL and ITV, taking on long odds.

Richard Branson, an ITV shareholder, said there was now "an 800lb gorilla in our midst", referring to Murdoch. "He's probably the bravest deal-maker the world has ever known, " his former employee Andrew Neil once said.

So much for the entrepreneur. His other persona, the peddler of sleaze, got a jolt on the far side of the Atlantic last week when standards hit the floor with a thud. Plans for the book-selling and TV arms of his News Corp empire to interview OJ Simpson about how he would have murdered his wife and another man were finally scrapped. A din of outrage had been generated both inside and outside Murdoch's empire over the planned interview and book, entitled If I Did It.

Simpson was acquitted of the murder of his ex-wife Nicole and Ron Goldman in 1995 in a highly charged criminal trial. Later, a civil court ruled that he had killed them. Few in the US today believe otherwise, and he has become something of a pariah.

Murdoch gambled on the principal that has served him well over the decades . . . never underestimate the public's taste.

This was one step too far though, even for the United States.

"I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project, " he said in a statement on Tuesday. His assessment, coming when it did, was not based on judgements of taste or standards, but a realisation that it would be a commercial disaster.

The death knell for the Simpson project was sounded when even commentators in Murdoch's Fox News began expressing outrage. The rightwing fruit Bill O'Reilly, who fronts a talk show on the channel, was among those who hit out.

Fox News is a roaring . . . that being the operative word for the manner in which debate is often conducted thereon . . . success in the conservative heartlands. It generates hundreds of millions for News Corp, which itself is worth around $67bn. The channel makes Sky News look like Pravda, the defunct communist mouthpiece.

Fox News is big on family values, and the likes of O'Reilly couldn't countenance a wife killer receiving a cheque from his employer. The channel is the flagship of the Fox network, built up by Murdoch to compete with the long-standing three main networks. As in Britain, the Australian came in, took on the establishment, and won out.

The network has in the past developed reality TV programmes such as Man vs Beast, which featured 44 dwarfs in a tug-of-war with an elephant. A more recent programme was Who's Your Daddy? which involved a woman who was adopted as a child trying to select which contestant is her real father.

Murdoch himself says he has strong family values, although he admits his own domestic situation hardly bears this out. He has been married three times and has fathered one, three and two children in these respective unions.

His uncharacteristic uturn on the Simpson stuff comes at a time when there is some sense he has softened. He is no longer sound on the tenets of the rightwing politics which have characterised his organs. One reason for this may be the doting he indulges on his two toddler daughters by his Chinese wife and former News Corp executive, Wendi Deng.

Some of his underlings also worry about the apparent friendship he has struck up with the Clintons, whom his newspapers used to trash unmercifully.

For years, Bill was referred to as "horndog-in-chief" in Murdoch's New York Post and was often depicted in cartoons in his underpants. Hillary didn't fare much better.

But last July, Murdoch hosted a fundraiser for Hillary, which raised eyebrows. He has also got involved in a climate-change venture Bill is running, after being convinced of the dangers of greenhouse gases by his son, James.

And Bill has also roped him into charity events, a new departure for a man who rarely gave to charity because he felt it would be wasted.

Many are now wondering whether he will endorse John McCain or Hillary if both run for president in 2008. Equally, in Britain, he will be courted by Tony Blair's probable replacement Gordon Brown and Conservative leader David Cameron for his grace and favour. He likes to keep politicians guessing as to whom he will make king.

Blair did well out of him. The two hit it off when the politician was in opposition, and the endorsement of the Murdoch press was seen as a huge boost to Blair's election victory in 1997. For his part, Blair has gone lukewarm on Europe over the years, from a position where he was strongly in favour of the project.

The shift is attributed to Murdoch's influence.

He has form in pulping books due to be published in the empire. In 1998, the former governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, had a memoir withdrawn by a News Corp arm. The general belief is that Murdoch axed it because it might be offensive to the Chinese communist party, at a time when he was attempting to get a foothold in that lucrative market.

It's all a long way from Adelaide, where Murdoch set out from a provincial paper, after an education that took in Oxford. He quickly scaled the peaks in Australia, setting up the first national newspaper there, before setting his sights on Britain.

In 1985, he became a US citizen to ease his way through ownership laws there.

The 1990s saw him turn his attention to Asia. Again, success has followed.

Retirement doesn't seem to be an option. Various offsprings have been positioned and repositioned within the empire for succession, but Rupert ain't going nowhere yet. He remains to some a cancer on standards and decency. To others, he is the ultimate swashbuckling capitalist, boldly going where others wouldn't dare. Well, most of the time.

C.V.

Name: Rupert Murdoch
Age: 75 Owns: Newspapers and TV stations in Britain, the USA and Asia, including News of the World, the Sun, the London Times, Sky, the New York Post, and the Australian.

Why in the news: He has made a uturn on plans for a book and interview with OJ Simpson based on how he would have killed his wife, if he did it. Most people believe that he did.