Publisher Behind Oj Simpson Controversy Gets the Sack

Judith Regan, the enfant terrible of American publishing who caused outrage by touting a quasi-confessional by OJ Simpson entitled If I Did It, has been sacked by her boss, Rupert Murdoch, during his company's Christmas party.

Ms Regan's sacking was announced in a terse statement. "Judith Regan's employment with HarperCollins has been terminated effective immediately," it said, adding that her staff would continue to work for the publishing house.

The statement was distributed on Friday evening as 4,000 revellers were descending on the Christmas party of Mr Murdoch's News Corp - the parent company - at a Manhattan hotel. It was engineered so swiftly that employees of her HarperCollins unit in Los Angeles had no idea of their boss's fate. Guests at the New York party were also reportedly unaware that she had lost her job.

Ms Regan's swift exit comes less than a month after Mr Murdoch stepped in to cancel a multi-million-dollar book and television deal for Simpson in which he gave an account of how he might have killed his murdered ex-wife and a friend if he had been guilty. The project caused consternation, with advertisers threatening to boycott affiliates of the Murdoch-owned Fox Television if they carried the interview with Simpson.

Ms Regan, 53, issued an eight-page defence of the deal in which she claimed to be a battered wife who saw in the Simpson confessional a path to healing. "I wanted him, and the men who broke my heart and your hearts, to tell the truth, to confess their sins, to do penance and to amend their lives. Amen."

The letter did not quell the controversy, and Mr Murdoch pulled the plug on the project. There was no immediate comment from Ms Regan on her sacking - and few tears shed by her colleagues at the weekend. But even in the publishing world, where Ms Regan had acquired many enemies, many people expected she would soon bounce back.

The Los Angeles Times reported that her exit was the result of a Friday afternoon telephone conversation with a HarperCollins lawyer in which she was allegedly abusive. The newspaper quoted News Corp officials as saying the phone call was the last straw.