Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to The Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolities.com. That's the restispolities.com. Welcome to The Restis Politics, Alistair here, not with Rory, but with Michael Wolfe. Because this week in our series on one of the 21st century's most significant figures,

Rupert Murdoch, we're looking at one of his worst legacies within the UK, the scandal of phone hacking.

When it was revealed that they were even hacking the phones of dead children, it shot Britain to its core,

exposed the very, very dark side of our media.

If you're interested in a little more, we've left a clip for you here. To hear the full episode

and get all the benefits of a trip plus membership, sign up at the rest is politics.com.

Did you think that phone hacking would bring him down?

I thought it had the capacity to, not necessarily because of the

crime itself, but because of their catastrophic handling of it. I mean, I can't remember what some

were up to, but they're into the hundreds of millions in terms of the costs already. Now,

in a sort of multi-billion company, that may not be so much, but I thought reputationally,

if you can match the reputational damage to the financial damage, I could see that it might so much. But I thought reputationally, if you can match the reputational

damage to the financial damage, I could see that it might have done. And I thought his appearance

at the select committee when Wendy Deng probably first entered public consciousness here in a big

way, because when the guy somehow smuggled through parliamentary security,

a custard pie, whatever it was.

And of course, in a weird sort of way,

I think that sort of helped Murdoch in a bit,

because that's what people remember about it.

Yes, no.

And then they remember Wendy standing up and prepared to take this guy on,

whereas James, who's sitting there, looking

...