Intrigue of Agatha Christie proportions reigned supreme around the corridors of Rupert Murdoch's Surry Hills media bunker on Friday, as staff attempted to digest the shock news one of the media mogul's most controversial lieutenants, Col Allan, was coming home … on Monday.

Affectionately referred to as Col Pot, Murdoch's troops were told by News Corporation's New York-based chief executive, Robert Thomson, that Allan would provide ''editorial direction'' during a ''particularly challenging time'' for Murdoch's vast Australian operations.

The move was seen by many as casting a shadow of doubt over the performance of Murdoch's News Corp Australia chief executive Kim Williams, appointed to the role in November 2011.

Williams, a man who dines at top-end restaurants and wears designer suits, is seen as the polar opposite of Allan, who famously patronises strip clubs.

Thomson described the appointment as ''a temporary change'', but friends suspect Allan's tenure could extend indefinitely, allowing him to leave a firm imprint on Murdoch's mastheads. Not to mention several anxious editors.

Thomson said Allan would be ''working with Kim Williams and providing extra editorial leadership for our papers''. However, insiders indicated the shots were being called by Murdoch himself, keen to flex his media muscle on the coming election.

A former editor of The Daily Telegraph, Allan was appointed editor-in-chief of the New York Post by Lachlan Murdoch in 2001. He was famously at the centre of a scandal that engulfed Prime Minister Kevin Rudd during his first tilt for that office, when it emerged he had taken Rudd on a beer-fuelled night to see naked dancers ''gyrate'' at strip club Scores in 2003.

More recently he was personally pilloried in the aftermath of the Boston marathon bombings after he failed to apologise for the Post's coverage, which included publishing pictures of two innocent backpackers wrongly identified as suspects on its front page. At one stage, a fake apology was inserted into some copies of the paper, which purported to be from Allan. It read: ''This week, the New York Post acted recklessly and with flagrant disregard for the principles of good journalism. I'd like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologise to our readers, to the people of Boston, and to the three men who were mistakenly investigated as suspects.''