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LONDON (AP) - Prominent British art collector Charles Saatchi has
admitted assault and accepted a police caution after published
photos showed him grasping the throat of his wife, celebrity chef
Nigella Lawson.
In Tuesday's editions, The London Evening Standard newspaper quoted
him as saying that he had approached police to discuss the incident
after seeking legal advice.
"Although Nigella made no complaint I volunteered to go to Charing
Cross (police) station and take a police caution after a discussion
with my lawyer because I thought it was better than the alternative
of this hanging over all of us for months," he told the newspaper,
where he is also a columnist. He said the questioning took four
hours.
Tabloid newspapers this week published photos of the incident,
which happened June 9 in a posh London restaurant.
Saatchi, 70, earlier had characterised the incident as a "playful
tiff" during an intense debate about the couple's children.
Lawson, 53, is a well-known TV presenter and chef whose cookbooks
are best-sellers in Britain and the United States.
Under British law, a caution is a formal warning given to someone
who admits the offence. It carries no penalty, but it can be used
as evidence of bad character if a person is later prosecuted for a
different crime.
Saatchi had told the Evening Standard newspaper on Monday that the
photos made the altercation look worse than it was.
Saatchi said "the pictures are horrific but give a far more drastic
and violent impression of what took place." "About a week ago, we
were sitting outside a restaurant having an intense debate about
the children, and I held Nigella's neck repeatedly while attempting
to emphasise my point," he was quoted as saying. "There was no
grip, it was a playful tiff." Saatchi also told the paper the
couple "had made up by the time we were home.
"The paparazzi were congregated outside our house after the story
broke yesterday morning, so I told Nigella to take the kids off
till the dust settled." Lawson's spokesman, Mark Hutchinson,
confirmed that she and her children had left the family home after
the photos were published but declined to comment further.
Saatchi and Lawson married in 2003 and live in London with Lawson's
son and daughter from her marriage to journalist John Diamond, who
died of cancer in 2001, and Saatchi's daughter from a previous
marriage.
Lawson gained fame with her 1998 best-seller How To Eat and
subsequent How to Be A Domestic Goddess (2000) and is one of
Britain's best-known cookbook writers, as well as the host of
foodie TV shows including Nigella Bites and ABC's cooking programme
The Taste. A former journalist who attended Oxford University, she
served as deputy literary editor of The Sunday Times and
subsequently wrote for numerous other newspapers and magazines.
Lawson is also one of the few British food personalities to have
had real success in the United States, both on television and with
her cookbooks. She has often made the point that she is not a
trained chef, but is simply showing people what they can do in
their own kitchens.
She is known for her sensual style on television - both critics and
admirers have called her shows "gastroporn." Lawson is also known
for her refreshing frankness. In January, she made news for
insisting that her belly not be airbrushed out of promotional
photos for her show, The Taste, on ABC.
"That tum is the truth and is come by honestly, as my granny would
have said," she wrote in a blog post.
Saatchi, co-founder of the Saatchi & Saatchi ad agency, owns
one of London's biggest private art galleries. He was the main
patron of the Young British Artists movement of the 1990s, which
made household names of artists including Damien Hirst and Tracey
Emin.