The very public disintegration of the marriage of Charles Saatchi
and Nigella Lawson continued on Sunday as the multimillionaire art
collector issued a statement to a newspaper saying he was divorcing the
TV chef.
Former advertising executive Saatchi, 70, who
accepted a police caution after photographs of him with his hand around
her neck during a row outside a restaurant were published, told the Mail
on Sunday: "I am sorry to announce that Nigella Lawson and I are
getting divorced."
The newspaper said Lawson, 53, was not
aware pre-publication "of the divorce ultimatum being issued by her
husband". Later her spokesman said: "There is no comment from Nigella."
In
a statement published in the newspaper, Saatchi said the couple had
drifted apart and that he felt he had "clearly been a disappointment" to
his wife in the last year or so. He was also disappointed she had not
spoken out in his defence when he was accused of physical violence
against her after the pictures, taken outside Scott's restaurant in
Mayfair, central London, where published on 16 June.
Lawson
left the couple's marital home in Chelsea shortly afterward, and,
reportedly, has been refusing to answer texts and voicemails from her
husband.
In his statement published on Sunday, Saatchi
said: "I am sorry to announce that Nigella Lawson and I are getting
divorced. This is heartbreaking for both of us as our love was very
deep, but in the last year we have become estranged and drifted apart.
"I
feel that I have clearly been a disappointment to Nigella during the
last year or so, and I am disappointed that she was advised to make no
public comment to explain that I abhor violence of any kind against
women, and have never abused her physically in any way."
He
said his hands were around her neck, but no pressure was applied. It
was a gesture, to hold her attention, and "could equally have been
Nigella grasping my neck to hold my attention – as she has done in the
past, although not in front of Scott's with a photographer snapping
away".
The still photograph gives a "wholly different and
incorrect implication", his statement said, and she had given a
statement to the police to support this view.
It adds: "I
am sorry that we had a row. I am sorry that she was upset. I am even
more sorry that this is the end of our marriage."
Saatchi,
who married Lawson, his third wife, 10 years ago and following the death
of her first husband, John Diamond, 47, from throat cancer in 2001,
wished her the best for the future and "her continuing global success"
and said he felt "very fortunate to have had such a lovely wife for many
years".
As Saatchi was vilified as a wife-beater, and
Lawson portrayed as a victim of domestic violence, he voluntarily went
to Charing Cross police station and accept a police caution. He later
made an ill-judged comment to the London Evening Standard, where he is a
columnist, describing the incident as a "playful tiff" and that he had
accepted the caution to prevent the incident "hanging over them".
Lawson had subsequently been pictured without her wedding ring.
