Ask George Michael whom he hates above all other, and the answer, throughout the course of his troubled life, will always be the same: Rupert Murdoch.

"I think Murdoch is the devil and has been for twenty years," he said in 2006. "The only dignity is in autonomy. I was so right about Murdoch. Twenty years later we have a media dictator."

So I'm amused to hear that 44-year-old Mr Michael has sold his soul to the devil. The former Wham! star has just signed an alleged £5 million deal with Harper Collins - part of Mr Murdoch's News Corporation.

"We're very excited about the book," says a Harper Collins spokesman.

"We approached him and we've been pursuing him for a while. There are all sorts of wild figures going around: it is a substantial sum, as you'd expect for someone of his calibre, but £5 million is wide of the mark."