2 Nigella pals take a powder
A LONDON jury acquitted the two personal assistants of Nigella Lawson on Friday after a salacious fraud trial that seemed more about the celebrity chef’s cocaine use than whether the accused sisters were thieves.
Lawson blasted the outcome of the trial —highlighted by the assistants’ claim that she was an insatiable cocaine user — and said the proceedings were a “sideshow” full of “false allegations” about her and her now ex-husband, Charles Saatchi.
Their former assistants — sisters Elisabetta, 41, and Francesca Grillo, 35, had each faced one count of defrauding high-flying art dealer Saatchi, who claimed they racked up $1 million on his credit card buying themselves luxury goods.
The sisters alleged Lawson had approved their expensive shopping habits with the tacit understanding that they wouldn’t tell Saatchi about her drug habits — a claim Lawson strongly disputed.
In a statement Friday, the TV food queen said she was “disappointed but unsurprised” by the verdict.
“Over the three-week trial, the jury was faced with a ridiculous sideshow of false allegations about drug use, which made focus on the actual criminal trial impossible,” she added.
During the trial, the Grillo sisters painted Lawson as a coke-sniffing powerhouse who used drugs to get through her busy schedule — including writing cookbooks at night while high.
Neither claimed to have seen Lawson taking drugs, but they told tales of rolled-up bank notes and bags of white powder around the house.
The juicy details added to the public interest in Lawson’s failed marriage, which grabbed headlines in July after her art dealer husband was photographed grabbing her neck asthey lunched in a London eatery.