Nigella Lawson’s husband on Monday downplayed pictures which appeared to show him grabbing the celebrity TV chef around the throat outside a London seafood restaurant, saying the two had had a “playful tiff”.
Charles Saatchi, 70, admitted the couple had a row as they sat outside Scott?s in Mayfair but insisted they had patched things up by the time they got home.
“About a week ago, we were sitting outside a restaurant having an intense debate about the children, and I held Nigella?s neck repeatedly while attempting to emphasise my point,” he told the Evening Standard newspaper.
“There was no grip, it was a playful tiff,” said the advertising guru, also one of the world’s leading collectors of contemporary art.
“The pictures are horrific but give a far more drastic and violent impression of what took place. Nigella?s tears were because we both hate arguing, not because she had been hurt.”
His statement is the first reaction by either of the celebrity couple to a set of photographs published in the Sunday People which appear to show Saatchi repeatedly grabbing his wife by the throat.
Onlookers told the tabloid the 53-year-old daughter of former Chancellor Nigel Lawson, looked to be grimacing and left the restaurant in a flood of tears.
Scotland Yard said they are aware of the newspaper report but have yet to receive an official complaint which would prompt a formal investigation into the incident.
“We had made up by the time we were home,” Saatchi told the Standard.
“The paparazzi were congregated outside our house after the story broke yesterday morning, so I told Nigella to take the kids off till the dust settled.”
Lawson rose to fame in 2000 with her best-selling “How to be a Domestic Goddess”.
She has sold more than three million books and her cookery shows are broadcast around the world.
Lawson has previously described her husband as “an exploder”.
She said in 2007: “I’ll go quiet when he explodes, and then I am a nest of horrible festeringness.”
The couple are due to celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary in September 2003.
Saatchi plays down Nigella 'tiff' photos
