British lawmakers ready to humble Rupert Murdoch ended up apologizing to him Tuesday after a protester smacked the aging media titan in the face with a shaving cream pie.Murdoch's wife, Wendi Deng, leapt to her husband's defense, slappin at the pie-thrower with elan.Then she picked up the pie plate and tried to hit the attacker with it.Police arrested Jonathan May-Bowles, aka Jonnie Marbles, a comedian and activist with UK Uncut, which protests corporate bigwigs who avoid paying taxes."You are a greedy billionaire," witnesses quoted him as saying.
Twenty minutes before he pied Murdoch, May-Bowles Tweeted: "It is a far better thing that I do now than I have ever done before. #splat."
Murdoch was unhurt. After a five-minute pause, the hearing resumed with the 80-year-old mogul appearing coatless but otherwise unaffected.
"Mr. Murdoch, your wife has a very good left hook," Labour Party MP Tom Watson told him.
Tory MP John Whittingdale, who was chairing the hearing, apologized to the tycoon, calling the attack "wholly unacceptable" and allowed Murdoch to read a statement that he had earlier been told he could not.Telegraph reporter James Kirkup, who was sitting so close he was splattered too, said Murdoch appeared stunned by the attack and his protective 42-year-old wife tended to him."Sitting on the table before him, she started to clear the foam from his face, sometimes embracing him, holding his bald head in her arms," he wrote.
Much as he was unhurt by the shaving cream, Murdoch appeared largely unscathed by the previous three hours of much-anticipated MP questioning.
In a sometimes doddering performance, he claimed total ignorance of all the wrongdoing that took place at News of the World, repeatedly denying that he knew of any bribery, blackmail or phone hacking."I do not accept ultimate responsibility. I hold responsible the people that I trusted to run it and the people they trusted," he said.
He insisted he remains the right man to lead the cleanup.
Murdoch's position at the head of the multinational he started 57 years ago was said to be hanging on the outcome of his performance.
The most immediate metric was positive: News Corp. shares soared 6% as the hearing continued.
The confrontation was carried live on TV in a dozen countries. London pubs were packed with hushed crowds glued to TVs and people lined up for eight hours to see the hearing live.
