£20m Nigella: I’ve had to take out a mortgage

WITH pictures published around the world of her then husband, Charles Saatchi, with his hand round her throat outside a Mayfair restaurant, Nigella Lawson could have collected a fortune when she divorced the moody multimillionaire art collector in 2013.

But Domestic Goddess Nigella chose to walk away with nothing of his, and she now appears to be counting the cost, despite being worth an estimated £20 million herself. The author and TV presenter, who accused Saatchi of acts of ‘intimate terrorism’ during their ten-year marriage, has said she was forced to borrow money from the bank in order to buy herself a new home.

‘I have very large overheads because, obviously, I had to start again,’ says Nigella, 56, right. ‘I have a mortgage. I want to pay [it] off and be solvent.’

You might think she would be able to receive some useful financial advice from her father, former Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson.

Sadly, the Tory peer admitted two

years ago that his situation was so precarious that he feared he’d be unable to leave anything in his will.

‘I just hope that my money will last through the rest of my life,’ said Lord Lawson, 83. ‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to leave anything to my children.’

Nigel, who has five surviving children, contrasted his fortunes with those of his parents. ‘My father was a tea merchant in the City of London,’ he said. ‘He owned his own business. My mother was the daughter of a wealthy stockbroker who provided her with an allowance, even after she was married.’ Nigel said he sold his only British home, in London’s Kensington, in 1974 for a low six-figure sum. ‘It’s probably worth an absolute fortune today,’ he said of the property, which would fetch at least £10 million on the current market. He now owns a house in France, which ‘has probably kept up with inflation but not increased in value in real terms since I moved in. It is probably worth not far short of a million euros (£758,000)’.

Nigella admits: ‘ I haven’t got any business savvy whatsoever, I’m afraid to say.’