LONDON — Rupert Murdoch's performance for members of Parliament may have been strong, but his wife stole the show.
Wendi Deng, 42, leaped to her feet when a protestor came at her 80-year-old husband with a shaving-cream pie. She swatted or punched the protestor, depending on which account is correct, deflecting the pie enough that Murdoch was creamed in the shoulder rather than the face.
The incident prompted Labour MP Tom Watson, a dogged critic of News International, to tell Rupert Murdoch, "Your wife has a very good left hook," though she used her right to strike attacker Jonathan May-Bowles, a leftist activist.
Deng's stand-by-her-man act made her an instant celebrity on YouTube, Twitter and media.
"Wendi to the rescue!" shouted the online edition of The Daily Mail, a British tabloid.
"Fearless ... Wendi leaps up to slap away assailant," said the website of The Sun, a Murdoch paper and Britain's top tabloid.
Even The Guardian, a left-leaning newspaper that broke the phone-hacking story, was admiring. "Rupert Murdoch's fiercely protective wife was, like, DENG!" blared its headline.
During most of the interrogation of her husband, Deng sat sedately behind him. When Rupert Murdoch mentioned that he'd taken "family" to 10 Downing Street, the residence of British prime ministers, Deng pointed to herself.
According to an account published in The Wall Street Journal years before it was acquired by Murdoch's News Corp., Deng was born in China, emigrated to the United States as a teen and attended business school at Yale before starting work at Star TV, a News Corp. property. She met Murdoch at News Corp. and married him in 1999. She is fluent in Mandarin and English and has taken a role in News Corp.'s activities in the Far East.
The couple have two children, according to the website of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. Deng, along with former prime minister Blair, is judging the foundation's film competition.