A Svengali’s parting shot at the goddess who outgrew him
Charles Saatchi used the media to create the image of TV cook Nigella Lawson. Now he is using it against her, says Cristina Odone
IT was impossible, in 1979, to be a student at Oxford University and not know of Nigella Lawson. She and a group of undergraduate friends had been splashed on the cover of a magazine. The “Bright Young Things”, as it dubbed them, led a charmed existence of champagne breakfasts and fast cars. The golden youths included gorgeous nobodies like Hugh Grant, but most, like Lawson (whose father was then the energy secretary under Margaret Thatcher), were the scion of important dynasties — titled, landed or just high profile.
Even among these stunners Lawson stood out. Her luscious looks turned heads, but she was a scholar too, a bluestocking who could recite cantos from Dante’s Inferno. I was a year below her and never in her set, but, like everyone else there, I felt I knew her.
I’m not sure anyone really did. Lawson was wary, even back then, of revealing too much of herself. Suffering — she went on to lose first her mother and then her sister to cancer — insulated her. Later, when her husband John Diamond also died from the disease, I remember being struck by how similar Lawson was to Jackie Onassis: a glamorous but tragic young widow with two small children who had to forge a path amid public scrutiny.
Like Jackie Onassis, Lawson soon found someone to lean on. Charles Saatchi did not quite match Ari Onassis’s outrageous wealth, but he had made a fortune with his PR company. Like the Greek shipping tycoon, Saatchi was immensely controlling: a perfect Svengali for a beautiful and vulnerable trophy wife. He could launch her; she would tame him.
It turned out to be a Faustian pact. The man who once manipulated the media to create this domestic goddess has used it now to humiliate her. Last Sunday, Charles Saatchi told a newspaper he was filing for divorce. Lawson learnt that her 10year marriage was over from the pages of a tabloid.
“I am sorry to announce that Nigella Lawson and I are getting divorced,” he said, characteristically trying to regain control of the situation.
Expressing his disappointment that his wife had failed publicly to exonerate his behaviour when he appeared to grab her by the throat while dining at Scott’s restaurant in London, Saatchi finished his statement on a distinctly sour note: “I wish Nigella the best for the future and for her continuing global success.” Svengali finally got his revenge on the woman who had outgrown him.
When Saatchi met Lawson, she had just come out with a bestselling cookery book, How to Eat. Like the cook herself, the recipes were fresh and delicious, but also a bit quirky. “Not to everyone’s taste,” as one foodie sniffed at the time.
Nor was Lawson herself, truth be told. When Michael Jackson, then-head of Britain’s Channel 4, decided to give Lawson a cooking show, he was warned that she was too posh, too bluestocking, too distant.
The sceptics had not noticed that Saatchi, who had transformed a grocer’s daughter into a prime minister, lurked behind the scenes. Saatchi instinctively knew that to draw television viewers, Lawson had to play down the wordy intellectual and ramp up the sex appeal. Women chefs on TV had hitherto been pleasant, chatty types, like Delia Smith and Julia Child. They diced, chopped and fried food as if it were a means to an end. Saatchi’s genius lay in persuading Lawson to caress, squeeze, lick the food as if it were an object of lust. Its preparation had to become a proxy for sex.
The formula worked. Viewers were seduced. Lawson, the temptress at the Aga, disproved the old Jerry Hall adage that “men want a cook in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom”. In the world according to Saatchi, the kitchen was not only the hearth, but the backdrop to lusty appetites and titillating in- nuendo. Men who could not boil an egg tuned in to savour Lawson in her tight-fitting outfits and scarlet lipstick. Women who had dismissed cooking as a housewifely chore now recognised its powerful sensuality.
Lawson married her Svengali. He revelled in her — nay, their — success. His status and millions ensured that no matter how popular his wife became, he was still the greater of the two. He plotted her career minutely, from the cheeky subversive title of her next book, How to Be a Domestic Goddess, to the outfits she should wear on TV.
He took care of her media profile, too — which parties she should attend and which restaurants they should frequent. She had to come across as clever but kind, sexy but nurturing — not too ambitious, not too assertive. His uncanny sense of PR polished Lawson’s image to golden perfection.
The problem was that it was just an image. The PR genius mistook illusion for reality. Lawson was not the pliable model of
Saatchi’s genius lay in persuading her to caress, squeeze, lick the food as if it were an object of lust. Its preparation had to become a proxy for sex
Saatchi’s apparent romantic fantasy. She was opinionated, clever and spirited. When he met her, tragedy had pummelled her into compliance.
But time restored Lawson’s sense of self — and success was giving her a new confidence. She was no longer a British celeb, she was a global star. Americans loved her, Swedes were calling their daughters Nigella and even the snooty French were endorsing the British recipes “de Nigella”.
Saatchi woke up to find he was the lesser of the two. Like so many men married to women who are more high profile, or bigger earners, Saatchi grew resentful. In his anger he made some bad miscalculations — the kind even a PR novice would have avoided. Having dismissed the throttling incident as no more than a tiff, Saatchi then accepted a police caution and allowed Lawson to be photographed taking her belongings from their marital home.
His latest act, however, in announcing through a newspaper that he intends to divorce her, is one calculated to heap maximum humiliation on his wife. He had used the media to create Lawson, now he would use it to destroy her.
Except Lawson will not be destroyed. Her resilience will see her through this crisis as it has seen her through all the previous ones.
She will bide her time, make a new home, maybe move with her children to the US, where she may well find herself a new man — a sunny, supportive figure whose star burns so much brighter than Saatchi’s.
After all, this chef knows that revenge is a dish best served cold. —