‘Put me on trial,’ Nigella challenges

LONDON Nigella Lawson told a court “to put me on trial” after being accused Thursday of taking cocaine throughout her marriage to Charles Saatchi.

The television cook left her family home with white powder on her face, hid cocaine in a hollowed-out book and smoked cannabis in front of her children, court heard.

Lawson, 53, was also accused of lying to police by failing to reveal her history of drug use when she attempted to withdraw as a witness in the fraud trial of two of her former assistants.

During a second day of evidence, Lawson agreed her drug use was “a dark secret” she shared with Saatchi but insisted she was not an addict.

The mother of two said it was “categorically not the case” that she had regularly taken cocaine throughout her 10-year marriage and that use had escalated in the past five years.

Lawson told the court Saatchi knew she had taken cocaine six times with her terminally ill first husband in 1999 but did not know she had used it once in July 2010 and had begun smoking cannabis regularly the same year.

She became emotional while answering allegations that she had regularly used cocaine.

“If you want to put me on trial, put me on trial. I cannot think it is right to put me here as a witness for the Crown and treat me like this,” she said.