from Crikey .....

Buried in the glossy pages of the October edition of UK Vogue is the revelation, midway through an interview with Wendi Deng (who wasn't sleeping due to the stress of the phone-hacking scandal, thanks for asking), that former British PM Tony Blair is godfather to Rupert's and Wendi's daughter Grace.

As The Telegraph reports:

"The former prime minister was reportedly present in March last year when Murdoch's two daughters by his third wife, Wendi, were baptised on the banks of the Jordan.

"The information was not made public and its disclosure in an interview with Mrs Murdoch in Vogue will prove highly embarrassing for Mr Blair."

Blair didn't feature in the 19-page spread in Hello magazine at the time. Shame, he'd look good in white.

Yes, that's Ivanka Trump. And Hugh Jackman, and yes, Nicole Kidman, who is BFFs with Wendi. The Queen of Jordan hosted the modest shindig, at the spot where it is said that Jesus was baptised.

But back to Blair.

The snowballing phone-hacking story coincided quite nicely with his Visy-sponsored speaking tour to Australia in July. Some local media outlets took the excellent opportunity to squeeze a good soundbite out of the former British Prime Minister on the scandal engulfing the British government, but no dice.

When asked in a joint press conference with Prime Minister Gillard about the phone-hacking revelations, Blair responded:

"For any political leader who's been operating in Britain in the last 30 or 40 years, the power of the media is such that you can't but have a relationship with people who are major and powerful media people ..."

Current British PM David Cameron at least acknowledged the uncomfortably close relationship between politicians and the Murdoch empire. Blair, however, argued that the problem could be more adequately attributed to social media and the feral nature of the 24/7 new media cycle:

"I think the way the 24-hour, seven-day-a-week media operates, combined with the new social media, just gives you a very difficult, brutal, occasionally feral environment in which you operate," Mr Blair said.

"I think we should look at this not just about phone hacking, but about how a media operates properly in a democracy in the modern world ..."

Nothing to see here, folks.