EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW Marco Pierre White’s wife: I have been trapped in a dead marriage for 10 years... why can’t he just give me a divorce?
EVEN by their own tempestuous standards, the latest chapter in the bitter ongoing split between Marco Pierre White and estranged wife Mati lends new meaning to the word acrimonious. Just a few weeks ago, Mati was shocked to be given notice – completely out of the blue, she says – that she must vacate the Edwardian home that Marco rents for her in leafy Chiswick, West London, where she lives with their youngest daughter.
The imminent prospect of being homeless just before Christmas was so frightening, it left a stressed Mati tearful and suffering sleepless nights.
To make matters still worse, she says Marco had given her no inkling that he would fail to renew the £50,000-a-year rental agreement until a brown paper envelope dropped through the door.
It gave her just two months to vacate the property – and, although he would later relent, for Mati this was the final straw.
Today, more than a decade after the couple first separated, she describes the saga of her long-running battle with the husband she once idolised as ‘emotional torture’. Despite her best efforts to seek a divorce, she is still married to the star chef, with no divorce in sight.
Indeed, the 53-year-old mother of Marco’s three children says that, through no fault of her own, she is still financially dependent on her husband after she says he persuaded her to abandon divorce proceedings seven years ago – when their joint legal bills had spiralled to £3 million.
‘It should have been done and dusted then but I was naïve and listened to Marco,’ she reflects.
‘I tried to do the right thing by him and for the love of our children. I agreed to hold fire because he made certain promises and assurances.
‘Our marital home in Holland Park was sold – I believe it went for £2.4million. I never saw a penny of it. He did not pay my share of the legal bill. And despite what people think, there was no legal settlement of any kind.’ As a result, says Mati, she ended up in considerable debt.
‘In the end, I was made bankrupt for the rest, which to this day causes me no end of problems. Ever since then, I’ve been trapped.’
Indeed Marco and Mati’s separation is possibly one of the most protracted and painful in British divorce history.
Only now, in a rare interview, does Mati tearfully admit she has reached the end of her tether and needs to find a solution.
‘This stalemate is intolerable,’ she says. ‘I dared to mention the D-word to Marco the other day, but he says we should wait until our youngest, almost 17, turns 18.
‘Why should I have to wait any longer? It’s not fair or kind. When I asked him “What will happen to me then?”, he said: “The courts will decide.” I don’t know the law and that worries me.
‘Marco is in complete control and always has been. People might imagine it’s great to have a glamorous relationship, a famous, rich husband and so on.
‘But I’m powerless. He does his own thing and pleases himself.
‘He wants a positive public family image but has not been willing to accept the hard work that goes with it. I accepted a lot of his selfish behaviour because I was not so confident then, and I was so in love with him.
‘The main reason I tried to get the divorce all those years ago was because I wanted my name on the deeds of our family home in Holland Park. When I confronted him, he refused to do anything about it. After all these years, I’m still trapped in a dead marriage. I can’t go on any longer being tortured by what feels at times like an emotionally vindictive husband.
‘He’s spent years refusing to divorce me because of the cost.
‘It’s demeaning having to go cap in hand to the Great Marco.’
Marco, of course, is known as much for his mercurial personality as for his gastronomic brilliance, but Majorca-born Mati admits that she, too, is hot blooded.
As Marco once put it himself, Mati was ‘olive skinned and beautiful’ when they first met in 1992. She had been the bartender at Canteen, the fashionable Chelsea restaurant Marco owned with film star Michael Caine.
By then, Marco was well on his way to fame as the youngest British chef to win three Michelin stars, who also attracted a rock-star following due at least in part to his infamous public temper tantrums.
He dramatically threw out restaurant critics and others who displeased him, yet diners queued for bookings in the hope they might see the ‘enfant terrible’ in action.
Marco already had two shortlived marriages behind him. He first won Mati’s attention by flicking matchsticks at her in the restaurant. Friendly after-work chats eventually blossomed into love.
They had two sons, Luciano Marco and Marco Zavier (known as Mini) before finally a wedding in April 2000 at his plush Belvedere restaurant in Holland Park. In 2001, their daughter Mirabelle was born and their happiness seemed complete.
But if Mati thought marriage would produce a stable family unit, she soon discovered otherwise. Marco, a highly ambitious, selfconfessed workaholic, was rarely at home, leaving an exhausted, struggling wife to cope alone with three boisterous children.
‘I found the loss of freedom tough,’ she says. ‘Marco was in charge of everything. He was highly controlling. He wouldn’t even allow me to choose the decor inside our home. I loved him so much and I got through it because I was used to being controlled by a man. My own father ruled the roost, so it seemed normal.’
Despite their initial happiness, it wasn’t long before Mati started hearing hurtful rumours of alleged romantic dalliances.
Soon their close relationship started veering between public displays of genuine affection at Frankies, the Knightsbridge pizzeria he owned with jockey Frank Dettori, to monumental rows, usually over her accusations of infidelity with stars and a succession of waitresses. Diners were often treated to the sight of a volatile Mati storming into restaurants, sometimes with pyjama-clad children in tow. Famously, she once poured an ice bucket over his head.
‘He just wanted me at home as a glorified housekeeper,’ she says.
‘Marco didn’t make any effort at home. I never knew where he was. His whereabouts were always a mystery. His staff and a driver led me a merry dance.
‘Things started really going wrong when I wanted him to come on a three-week summer holiday to Spain with me and the children and I said: “If you don’t come I will divorce you!” He really didn’t want to go and dug his heels in.
‘He told me the night before that he wouldn’t be coming because he had a serious business meeting.
‘The week before, I had found him sitting in the bath cutting all his hair off in great chunks. He ended up looking like Telly Savalas. It was such a strange sight. I think it was a protest, a control thing.
‘Eventually, after a week, he turned up. He stubbornly sat in sweltering 40C heat wearing jeans
I’m powerless. He does his own thing and pleases himself
and a shirt, no shorts or sandals or sunscreen, drinking water and refusing food. I was dreadfully sad for my mother, cooking food with her grandchildren around. He was like a stranger to us.’
Their rows often became physical. As things escalated, both Mati and Marco ended up getting arrested on separate occasions.
In 2006, she angrily accused Marco of having an affair with busty stage and TV actress Martine McCutcheon and glamorous banker Robin Saunders.
Eventually, in 2007, feeling emotionally drained and increasingly isolated, she instigated divorce.
But after three years of rapidly mounting costs, Marco convinced her to abandon the case.
She says: ‘Marco was due in the witness box to be cross-examined over his assets, but the week before he took me aside, looked deeply into my eyes and said, “Please don’t do this Mati. Think of our children.” He’d got me. How could I do that and deprive my own children? I agreed to drop the divorce.’
‘I realise now it was emotional blackmail. But I still loved him and cared for the children’s wellbeing. I never dreamed that all these years later I would still be trapped, worrying about what’s going to happen to me. Somehow I will survive. The thing is, I can’t get away from Marco. He dominates my life.
‘I try to be strong for the sake of my youngest but this is too much, thinking we were losing our home. It’s mental abuse. I’m going through so much emotional pain living in limbo like this.’
Speaking in the rented five-bedroomed home packed with prints and sculptures, Mati says, ‘This is a lovely house. But it is not mine. I have had a happy time here healing from some of the madness and darkness of previous years. I’m not a greedy woman and I’m not grand. I do not need a palace or a house as big as this.
‘I got the notice telling me to leave on National Suicide Prevention Day, which I must say is ironic. I was devastated and shaking. I thought: Where am I going to go?’
To her relief, Marco did eventually change his mind and signed a contract allowing her to remain. But by then, the damage was done.
To critics who suggest she should get a job she retorts: ‘I have brought up children and for many years worked as well in Marco’s restaurants. I’ve done voluntary work with autistic adults which I enjoy and I paint and write, which I see as a future career. And I am in the process of setting up my art website Heavenly Macabre.
‘People assume I’m a rich bitch. They are wrong.’
And she adds about the man she once loved: ‘With Marco, everything seems to be about image. I don’t think he is connected to his feelings. It is like he is dead inside.
‘He understands people well but there is no real empathy – his huge charisma lets him get away with being ruthless.
‘Marco has power and privilege. I’m just mum.’
She goes on: ‘Things don’t have to be this way. He often uses intermediaries to discuss private and personal family and finance matters with me. It is so humiliating and disrespectful to do that to the mother of your children.
‘I loved and cared about Marco so much. He didn’t have a mother so I also felt maternal towards him. Now, I have mental scars. But I don’t want pity. I refuse to be a victim. This is just the way that things are.
‘This is all caused by his constant unreasonable behaviour and unwillingness to accept any responsibility for any of his past actions.’
Not that Marco, 56, seems unduly worried. Far from it, he is going from strength to strength, travelling the world with his various business ventures, including a prestigious colonial style hotel and restaurant The English House in Singapore. He is currently filming in Italy.
Marco also has lucrative advertising deals with P&O Ferries, not to mention numerous branded licensing and franchise businesses.
Yet Mati says that all she wants is a simple life surrounded by her art works, poetry, her pet dog Peach and her cat Templeton.
‘I married an icon but I’ve been left with sleepless nights,’ she ponders aloud. ‘He said on the phone: “I’ve moved on. Why can’t you?”
‘I just wasn’t quick enough to reply, “How can I, when you won’t let me?”’
There’s no empathy. His huge charisma lets him be ruthless