Over in London, Nigella Lawson, celebrity cook (she eschews the label of chef), is giving everyone an object lesson in how to handle that awkward situation of being called a drug addict by former employees who may or may not have ripped you off to the tune of about a million bucks. Lawson was called to testify in the trial of two Italian sisters, Francesca and Elisabetta Grillo, who worked in her home while she was married to Charles Saatchi, the advertising mogul. The two women have been accused of running up huge bills for their personal expenses on the credit cards they were issued by the couple. Video: 10 Questions with Nigella Lawson In a twist that has London’s tabloids foaming at the mouth, details of Lawson’s divorce from Saatchi have become part of the defense of the Grillo sisters, particularly an email allegedly from Saatchi that calls Lawson “Higella,” and says that she’s a drug addict. The sisters say that they were given permission to spend the money in question in return for their silence re. the drug thing. It’s enough to make a woman want to go into hiding, but Lawson, whose father was U.K.’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson (the equivalent to Head of the Treasury), is completely owning it. Here are the most delicious tactics from Lawson’s first two days in court, should you ever find yourself in the same quandary: Come clean, and preach: “I have to say with some shame that I smoke the odd joint, starting I would say, in the last year of my marriage to Mr Saatchi….It made an intolerable situation tolerable and it was a false friend and it is not a good idea.” Show your repentance: “I can say that since freeing myself from a brilliant but brutal man, I am now totally cocaine, cannabis and any drug-free. I don’t have a drug problem, I have a life problem.” Make up an irresistible new phrase: Lawson said her ex-husband was subjecting her to “intimate terrorism.” Use your![]()
