The British public loves a good session of washing dirty linen in public, especially when the washers are rich and famous. With TV chef Nigella Lawson and ex-husband, art multi-millionaire Charles Saatchi, you have both. But this one is really going too far.
First Nigella and Charles divorced in double quick time last summer, after a public spat when he did or did not put his hands around her throat, depending on who you believe. A dignified silence followed, but that wasn’t the end of it.
Now Nigella is in court to give her side of the story this week after her Italian personal assistants, Francesca and Elisabetta Grillos, said she took drugs and let them run riot with the credit cards to keep quiet. Then her ex-husband Charles Saatchi said in an email read in court that she used drugs, but then contradicted himself, later saying he had no evidence to support that. Did she or didn’t she? The trial at Isleworth Crown Court is actually of Nigella’s former assistants, who deny fraud to the tune of nearly HK$8 million. But the kitchen sink drama is coming out too.
Yesterday, Wednesday, the lady herself spoke up. Was it just a case of miffed husband and greedy employees taking advantage of a busy TV star? Was Nigella really sniffing away behind the fridge? Well, she admitted taking cocaine, but denies having a drug problem or being an addict. She explained she had first indulged with her late first husband, journalist John Diamond, when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. It gave him some escape, she said.
A lot on her plate
She said she was responsible for looking after him and the family and was breadwinner - and that she had told her doctor about it at the time. She said she took it again in July 2010, after she felt she had been "subjected to intimate terrorism" by her second husband, now ex, Charles Saatchi.
Nigella, 53, added: "there was another time I took cocaine. In July 2010 I was having a very, very difficult time.