Nigella Lawson brand in jeopardy in high-profile trial

On June 18, 2013, shocking images splashed over international media of multi-millionaire art dealer Charles Saatchi squeezing the neck of his then-wife, “Domestic Goddess” Nigella Lawson. Absurdly, the last frame before Lawson fled the public seafood place had Saatchi tweaking her nose.

The scandalous spread in UK’s Mirror shocked the world and spurred serious conversations about spousal abuse. It is a problem, said media pundits, even among the rich and famous.

Saatchi is estimated to be worth, together with his brother, £120 million ($196 million), and Lawson is the daughter of prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s former chancellor of the exchequer, Nigel Lawson, and has become an independently wealthy food icon on British and, more recently, US television.

The couple, both of whom are Jewish, divorced seven weeks later.

New headlines this week in an equally shocking fraud trial of Lawson’s two former personal assistants included allegations of the television personality daily partaking in cocaine, as well as abusing Class B drugs (including marijuana) and prescription pills.

Sisters Elisabetta and Francesca Grillo are accused of illicitly spending some £685,000 ($1.12 million) over four years in luxury shopping sprees at top fashion houses and on first-class flights and hotels.

In the trial, which is thought to run another two weeks, the sisters are alleged to have abused their trusted positions in the Lawson-Saatchi household (Elisabetta began work with Lawson during her marriage to journalist John Diamond as a nanny in 1999) and racking up some £76,000 in credit card bills a month.

In their defense, the sisters have claimed Lawson approved their unlimited spending to ensure they wouldn’t reveal her drug problems, including using with her daughter, to Saatchi.

Additionally, the sisters apparently feel the personal purchases were an accepted perk of their jobs.

As quoted in the Daily Mail, the lawyer for the sisters said in court, “Unbeknown to you they believed that they were authorized to incur this personal expenditure, and suddenly you were saying they were not.”

To put the spending into perspective, the Daily Mail claims Lawson herself spends £7,000 per month on her credit card on average, whereas the “jury was told Francesca’s average monthly spend was £48,000 while Elisabetta’s was £28,000 — compared with the other personal assistants who spent a maximum of £8,000.”

A high-profile case like this may tank Lawson’s upcoming US launch of the second season of ABC’s cooking contest, The Taste, set to run in January. Prior to the trial it was announced November 11 that the popular show would be expanded to two hours.

On the question of whether the trial will affect her US career, the Daily Mail writes, “TV network ABC said a second series featuring Miss Lawson would be screened as planned in January, but sources said bosses were ‘debating’ whether to invite her back for a third. ‘We will wait to see the fallout from the court case and if there are further allegations of drug use,’ said the source. ‘If these allegations are proven and substantiated, then her career on American TV is over.'”

Lawson, who is both a judge on the program and a co-executive producer with fellow Jewish chef Anthony Bourdain, is also meant to return to Channel 4 with a British version of the program after nearly a decade away from the station that ran her first show, “Nigella Bites.”

In light of the severity of the claims against her and the lingering questions from the scandalous June photos, social and mainstream media buzz have not been kind to Lawson.

As journalist Allison Pearson writes of Lawson, “the most admired and envied woman of my generation,” in the Telegraph, “No British audience would be able to watch her new TV series, due in January, with anything other than morbid curiosity and sniggers every time she measures out two ounces of flour.”