Nigella Lawson made mashed potatoes seductive.
But her love life wasn't always as pleasurable. From a heartbreaking death to an ugly divorce,
keep watching for what the tabloids got wrong about Nigella's exes.
It was the late '80s, and Nigella Lawson had yet to earn her crown as TV's "Domestic Goddess."
Nevertheless, she was a busy bee. After studying medieval and modern languages at Oxford,
Lawson went on to pen a restaurant column for The Spectator. And from that point,
she became deputy literary editor at The Sunday Times, at 26 years old.
It was there that she met her future husband,
writer John Diamond. As Nigella recalled to The Guardian,
"He had this sense of ease in himself, and that made the air around him comfortable."
"I think it was his confidence that I found so attractive."
What started off as a work fling matured into a lifetime commitment. And the two
said 'I do' three years after they met. Cooking had always been part of Nigella's life.
During her university days, she would make dinner for her friends,
and once she launched her publishing career, she created meals for her colleagues. But her hubby,
John, saw the potential for a full-fledged cookbook in his wife's love of food and writing.
"This is what cooking is all about."
After some initial hesitation, Lawson ultimately wrote 1998's "How to Eat";
544 pages of candidly-written cooking tips and recipe ideas. The book was a hit,
and became the launchpad for Lawson transforming into the household name she is today.
In a devastating twist, John was diagnosed with throat cancer at the age of 43. As chronicled
in his Times column, and documented in the movie "A Lump In My Throat,"
Diamond lost his ability to talk, and had his tongue removed. Lawson was forced to
step up as his translator. As a close friend of Lawson's told The Guardian,
"He was her gregarious side and she was his calm, and then those roles had to switch."
Diamond succumbed to the disease just four years later. Lawson' s mother
had died of liver cancer in her 40s, and her sister died of breast cancer
in her 30s. Lawson often joked about being Typhoid Mary, telling the BBC,
"Survivor's guilt is quite well documented,
it is quite difficult seeing other people suffer. There is no control ... but you
learn that all the important things in life are beyond one's control."
"I feel I'm a very open person, and yet, I'm very much not in control."
Immediately tasked with caring for their two young children,
Lawson was left with Diamond's loving last words to her:
"How proud I am of you and what you have become. The great thing about us
is that we have made us who we are." A little over two weeks after Diamond's passing,
photos of Lawson and advertising mogul Charles Saatchi surfaced in The Mail
on Sunday. Reportedly, with Saatchi having been a close friend of Lawson's,
Diamond had an inkling about Saatchi's crush on his wife — and didn't mind them getting
together. But Saatchi's wife at the time, Kay, did mind. And she reportedly commented,
"Reading about the Domestic Goddess every day has not been easy for me."
Lawson was actually introduced to Saatchi by Diamond. They had bonded over several
rounds of Scrabble, playing for about $300 per game, and became friends.
Lawson moved into Saatchi's home less than a year after Diamond's passing.
Charles Saatchi had several prized possessions — like artwork by Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin — but
he probably valued his privacy the most. In 2002, Lawson admitted to Vanity Fair,
"Charles hasn't posed for a photograph in 30 years."
Some thought of his demeanor as being a little rough around the edges. One of his staffers even
recounted how he would throw furniture around the room when his temper flared.
And as his ex-wife Kay noted to the outlet,
"When the light shines on you, he is charming and amazing and special. I know,
because he shone it on me. Then the light fades and there is darkness."
But when it came to Lawson, Saatchi appeared to be a warm and fun-loving kind of guy.
She explained to the Guardian in 2002,
"He's full of life and very clever and funny and very cozy. Just a nice north London boy."
The couple got hitched in September 2003. But as individuals, they were worlds apart.
While Lawson was a public figure with an interest in socializing, Saatchi was more private — and
found it tedious to sit through a party. Though the pair hosted events attended by the likes of
author Salman Rushdie and rocker Mick Jagger, Saatchi always had an air of disinterest. And
as The National Post noted, Lawson claimed he limited how many parties she could host.
During her marriage to Saatchi, Lawson continued on with her show "Nigella Bites" and launched
several fresh spinoffs, including "Nigella Feasts," "Nigella Express," and "Nigella Kitchen."
But while her professional success appeared enviable from the outside,
the star was privately enduring a dark storm within her relationship.
Lawson's friend Nathaniel Goldberg told the Mirror,
"They clearly adored each other but the atmosphere always depended on his mood.
And his mood was variable. Hers was no longer the house you just dropped into
and Charles was not one to sit around the kitchen table cracking jokes."
In June 2013, almost a decade after their wedding,
a shocking incident gave the first clue to the public that there was trouble brewing.
A photo of Saatchi grabbing Nigella by the throat in a seemingly violent manner while
at a restaurant, made the rounds — spurring a series of events that led to their split.
Lawson moved out of the house, along with her kids, soon after the newspapers picked up the
photo. And Saatchi voluntarily accepted a, quote, "caution for assault" from the police.
Though Saatchi brushed off the incident as an innocent little quibble,
the couple divorced just over a month later. As part of the divorce settlement,
Lawson reportedly wanted nothing from Saatchi but the contents of their kitchen. But if she thought
she could just walk away with the pans, ladles and pantry staples, she couldn't have been more wrong.
In the months following the divorce, the couple's private lives were ripped open
for the public. After Saatchi's reputation took a hit with the apparent choking photo,
Lawson said there were attempts to sabotage hers. According to the BBC,
a PR blog accused her of taking drugs. And she said that the write-ups were…
"Dedicated to salvaging Mr. Saatchi's reputation and destroying mine."
Meanwhile, the couple's personal assistants, Elisabetta and Francesca Grillo,
were on trial for fraud. Saatchi insisted that Lawson give a statement and help clear
his name — and if she didn't, Lawson claimed, he threatened to "destroy"
her. Saatchi blamed Lawson for allowing the assistants to spend the money in return for
remaining quiet about her supposed drug use. Though Lawson did admit to using drugs to cope
with her first husband's illness and once to deal with Saatchi's emotional abuse,
she insisted that she didn't have an actual drug problem, telling Vanity Fair,
"I found it made an intolerable situation tolerable."
After the nightmare following her split from Saatchi, Lawson needed time to heal. A year
after she had called Saatchi a "brilliant but brutal man," Lawson appeared on ABC News, saying,
"I have to be honest, to have not only your private life but distortions of your private
life put on display is mortifying. But there are people going through an awful
lot worse and to dwell on any of it would be self-pity and I don't like to do that."
And with that, Lawson did move on. She put out a book featuring her best recipes for
clean eating, called "Simply Nigella," she appeared on MasterChef Australia,
and she launched a new show, "Nigella: At My Table," in the years that followed.
"My version of sticky toffee pudding sauce has a savage intensity."
During the pandemic in 2020, she spent her days at home, enjoying an easy routine of writing in
the mornings and drinking Campari and soda in the afternoons. As she shared with the Guardian,
"I'm very happy not having to fill up my life going to things. I very much like having no
public life. […] I'm very happy at last. […] I don't know if it was the calm of lockdown,
or getting older, but I've stopped looking back on the past an awful lot. And after 60 years of being
a ruminator, it's an amazing thing. I guess." 2018 marked the 20th anniversary of Lawson's
first book, "How to Eat." As she told The Cut, it was the book that made her realize,
"I could express my thoughts about life through writing about food."
And none of it would have happened if her late hubby
John wasn't so confident about his wife's skills. She told the outlet,
"My husband said to me, 'You're always so definite on your likes
and dislikes and what you think about food,
and most people don't have that confidence. And you should explain how you get to those views.'"
"In a restaurant, you have to think of other people. I cook for my children. I
grew up eating my mother's hair, and I don't see why they can't grow up eating mine."
Lawson was hesitant to write a cookbook because of what her literary peers would
think of her. She had always seen herself as somewhat of a great,
aspiring novelist. But with her husband's support, and her editor's insistence,
she wrote her debut cookbook, which went on to sell 300,000 copies by 2001.
To celebrate the 20 years since its first publishing, Lawson launched an audiobook version,
remembering her late husband on Instagram. She wrote,
"This time 20 years ago, I was at the launch party for my first book, 'How To Eat.' Looking
at this photo makes me happy, but also very sad. I wish I could be in John's arms now."
If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse,
you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233.
You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.