Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is urging News International CEO Rebekah Brooks to 'do the right thing and leave now.'
In an interview on Libyan state television, Gaffafi says: "She may well be charismatic, but she's also batshit loopy. She's power-daft, and yet I don't think she can hold out much longer. It's getting embarrassing, y'know?"
Colonel Gafaffi first met Brooks, then Rebekah Wade, while taking part in a military documentary with her former husband, the actor Ross Kemp.
"I remember meeting this squat tough sinewy, bull-necked character and thinking, ooh who's that with Ross? During dinner, Kemp suggested she might want to ease off on the carbs and she smashed him square in the face with a plate. I thought, you've got your work cut out for you there, mate.
"She's grown up accustomed to power, you understand? You have to remember she became the youngest ever editor of a national newspaper, at the age of twelve."
An intensely private self-publicist, very little is know about Rebekah Brooks herself; she has always insisted that she may, or may not be, an enigma. After rising to power at News International with astonishing speed, and the highest number of confirmed kills, she is now considered the most powerful woman to be told what to do by Rupert Murdoch.
"Hey, I'm something of a maverick myself," confesses Colonel Gadaffi, "so I totally get where she's coming from. But you've only got to look at her now to realise that the lights are on, but everyone's been escorted from the building."
Gadaffi had previously praised Brooks for thriving in the macho pressure-cooker environment of tabloid journalism. He said: "If there is one thing that makes my blood boil it is Fleet Street's rampant chauvinism, so you have to hand it to the little lady, she's a smart cookie."
However, even Gadfaffi became wary of being seen as 'too close' to the 'flame-haired harpie'.
Speaking to the BBC in 2002, Gafaffi admitted: "I don't attend any of her parties, no. My reputation is bad enough, without being seen cozying up to some power-crazed dicator over the Moet and figs-in-a-blanket."
The Colonel now believes that Brooks has to draw a line-in-the-sand under the whole affair.
"I'd urge her to go quickly, and avoid dragging this out further. The cost, not only in human lives," he explains, "but more importantly in News Corp shares is getting too high to pay.
"We're both Gemini's you see. On the one hand we have this warm, cuddly side and on the other the blind fury of a demonic hellspawn."
With an affectionate smile, Gadaffi adds: "I look at Rebekah Brooks and I think, ah that could have been me, if I'd gone completely and utterly bonkers."
