NIGELLA LAWSON
Is love back on the menu for chef?
NIGELLA Lawson has been on a secret date with an author who spent 18 months in jail after being wrongly convicted of the IRA killing of a policeman, it emerged yesterday.
The television chef, 57, was spotted enjoying a candlelit dinner with Ronan Bennett who was falsely accused of being involved in killing Inspector Bill Elliott in 1975.
Fellow diners at the popular east London restaurant My Neighbours The Dumplings, said there appeared to be flirty body language between the pair during the outing on Saturday.
They left the Hackney restaurant just after 11pm and were seen laughing as they walked down the road together.
One onlooker said: “I assumed they were a couple from their body language and the way they looked at each other.
“The flirtatious body language was there. She was playing with her hair and they seemed quite touchy-feely.”
Bennett, 61, was held at the Maze prison in Northern Ireland, after being wrongly convicted of killing the RUC officer following a Belfast bank robbery.
A self-confessed anarchist, his 1975 murder conviction was overturned later that year with the Court of Appeal ruling “the evidence of identification was unsatisfactory”.
But following his release he was charged with separate offences in 1979, including possessing an explosive substance.
He and three other anarchists were tried at the Old Bailey but he was acquitted at the end of a 14-week trial.
During this latter trial the court heard how police found The Anarchist Cookbook – an infamous terror guide and instruction manual – at a flat which was used by Bennett.
Officers also allegedly discovered wigs, false moustaches, fake passports and balaclavas. Since then the father of two has gone on to write several books and also worked as a television and film producer – including working on 2009’s Public Enemies, which starred Johnny Depp and Christian Bale. Bennett’s wife Georgina Henry died from cancer in 2014. Nigella’s first husband John Diamond also passed away from the disease 13 years earlier. She famously split from her ex-husband – the millionaire advertising tycoon Charles Saatchi – after shocking images of an argument between the couple in a restaurant emerged in 2013. Saatchi was seen with his hand on her throat. At the time Saatchi laughed off the incident as a “playful tiff” but later accepted a police caution for assault.
And the millionaire soon announced he would be divorcing Nigella after 10 years of marriage because she refused to defend his reputation following the publication of the photographs which he claimed were misleading.
He had originally considered taking her to court over the case but had a change of heart and decided that he wanted to “get on with his life”.
Back in December Nigella said cooking had proved to be therapeutic in the wake of their marriage breakdown.