Newspaper nerds will be thrilled to learn that News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks is about to give a public speech – only her second.
Limelight-loathing Brooks, chief executive of News International, delicately put her head above the parapet only once previously, and that was because News Corporation chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch bossed her into giving the Hugh Cudlipp lecture last year.
But that was a corporate defence of News International and campaigning tabloid journalism. This speech, for the networking group Woman in Advertising and Communication London on 23 February, will be rather more fascinating because instead of a corporate spiel, organisers have requested that Brooks give a "personal" speech.
I am hoping Brooks, no doubt wearing her lucky red-soled Christian Louboutin stillettos, will tell the story of how she rose from from a Cheshire state school to become the most charming tabloid operator of all time and then Empress of Wapping. It is quite a story. Barbara Taylor Bradford needs to come our of retirement to write it.
