British contemporary art collector and ad guru Charles Saatchi, who last month was issued a caution for assault on his wife Nigella Lawson, the celebrity television chef, has announced his decision to divorce her.
Media-shy Saatchi, who has been married three times, ironically revealed the end of his marital relationship in a newspaper interview on Sunday.
Saatchi had been cautioned last month after the Sunday People published photographs which showed the Iraq-born co-founder of the ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi grasping her neck with his hands as they sat at a table outside a central London restaurant.
“I am sorry to announce that Nigella Lawson and I are getting divorced,” he told the Mail on Sunday newspaper.
The marriage ended as Saatchi felt “disappointed” that his wife did not defend him in public. “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.
Fifty-three-year-old Lawson, who also writes bestselling cookbooks, has made no comment on the issue and had moved out from the couple’s family home.
Saatchi married Lawson in 2003 and they used to live with her children from her marriage with journalist John Diamond, who died of cancer, and his daughter from an earlier marriage. Saatchi was married earlier to Doris Lockhart and Kay Saatchi.
Seventy-year-old Saatchi also revealed that he and his wife had “become estranged and drifted apart” over the last year.
“This is heart-breaking for both of us as our love was very deep, but in the last year we have become estranged and drifted apart,” Saatchi said, adding, “I am sorry we had a row. I am sorry she was upset. I am even more sorry that this is the end of our marriage.”
The couple had a row after Nigella’s press adviser asked Saatchi to apologise for “assaulting” his wife as photographs of their altercation were published across the world. An angry Saatchi, the report revealed, told his wife to “Pack her bags and go.”
He also tried to insist that his actions were “not violent.”
“The row photographed at Scott’s restaurant could equally have been Nigella grasping my neck to hold my attention — as indeed she has done in the past although not in front of Scott’s with a photographer snapping away,” he said.