Nigella, 'the habitual criminal': As American TV airs promo for her new series, court is told she 'feared her husband's reaction if he learned about the drugs'

Miss Lawson, pictured this week, was described in court as a 'habitual criminal' who hid a daily cocaine habit and gave drugs to her teenage daughter

At the opening of the fraud trial against Miss Lawson’s two former assistants, the court heard there was a ‘culture of secrecy’ in the marriage between Miss Lawson and Charles Saatchi. 
Anthony Metzer QC, defending the couple’s former employee Elisabetta Grillo, told Isleworth crown court that Miss Lawson kept secret her drug habit from her husband.
‘The defendants’ case is that Ms Lawson lied to her ex-husband about her drug use and the expenditure incurred by the defendants,’ Mr Metzer said.

‘This was because she was fearful about Mr Saatchi’s reaction if he knew about the extent of the drug use. Therefore there was a culture of secrecy in their marriage.’
He added: ‘Ms Lawson was aware that the defendants knew she was a habitual drug user, so she therefore allowed this expenditure.’
The court has heard Miss Lawson took cocaine, Class B drugs and prescription pills so often that her husband called her ‘Higella’.

Both Miss Lawson and Mr Saatchi now face being questioned under oath about their marriage, and on her alleged ‘habitual criminality’.
Mr Metzer spoke of ‘the eagerness with which Mr Saatchi has embraced’ the Grillos’ drug claims against his wife, saying this was ‘bizarre’ given his previous anger at them ‘deceiving him’.
He argued the defendants could not receive a fair trial ‘as there has been a manipulation of the court process by the two main prosecution witnesses in this case’ – and pointed out that allegations such as the claim Miss Lawson is a drug addict could conveniently be made in court without fear of her suing for defamation.
Mr Metzer said that if the trial did go ahead, ‘it is a device in which our clients are in the middle’.

Nigella wears a stunning blue dress in clips from the new series of U.S. cooking show The Taste. She is rumoured to be paid in the region of £200,000 per episode for the show, which is a ten-part series

He went on: ‘It’s a convenient forum for Mr Saatchi and Miss Lawson to rehearse disputed issues between them, in the criminal courts where, of course, libel is not possible.’
He added: ‘If Mr Saatchi is telling the truth, then Miss Lawson is a habitual criminal.
'What is clear is that he still maintains and still believes that she is a habitual drug user. That’s clear from the statement he gives.

An advert for Nigella's new American TV show, above, aired during Dancing with the Stars in the US this week. It was broadcast just hours after allegations of the TV chef's 'cocaine use' were heard in court

‘It is impossible for them both to be telling the truth. The two prosecution witnesses are fundamentally at loggerheads. One of them is telling the truth, the other is not.’
The high profile pair – who divorced shortly after Mr Saatchi was infamously pictured grabbing Miss Lawson’s throat and pinching her nose outside a London restaurant in June – are the supposed victims and main witnesses in the trial of two former assistants accused of fraudulently spending almost £700,000 of their money.

Charles Saatchi pictured leaving the Saatchi Gallery in London, sent venomous emails to his ex-wife accusing her of 'poisoning' her daughter with drugs

Defence barristers for the accused, Italian sisters Francesca and Elisabetta Grillo, yesterday revealed Mr Saatchi, 70, believes the two assistants’ claims that his wife, 53, was getting high on cocaine and other drugs on a daily basis throughout their ten-year marriage, with him nicknaming her ‘Higella’.
It was even suggested his discovery of her supposed drug abuse, and the assertion that she allowed the Grillos to spend wildly on family credit cards providing they kept quiet about the drugs, led to the ‘throttling’ and nostril-examining incident outside Scott’s restaurant in Mayfair.

But an attempt to have the prosecution quashed on the grounds that Mr Saatchi appeared to accept the Grillos’ defence and because the case had become all about the row between the famous couple failed yesterday. 
It means Miss Lawson, Mr Saatchi, the two accused former members of staff, and potentially other staff members and relatives will all be quizzed about the marital break-up, Miss Lawson’s alleged drug abuse and accusations that she gave drugs to her 19-year-old daughter Cosima, also known as Mimi.
The court had already heard that last month Mr Saatchi sent a venomous email to his ex-wife saying: ‘You and Mimi were so off your heads on drugs, you allowed the sisters to spend whatever they liked.
‘I believe every word the Grillos have said, who, after all, only stole money.
'You Higella, on the other hand, poisoned your child with drugs and trashed her life.’ 
Mr Saatchi has further claimed that his ex-wife was so ‘off her head’ that she was unable to remember what she had permitted the Grillos to do with the family’s Coutts bank credit cards. 

MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION: WILL DRUG CLAIMS KILL HER US TV CAREER?

Nigella Lawson’s chances of conquering the lucrative US market are now in danger of collapsing like a bad soufflé,  experts said yesterday.
Drugs claims surrounding the TV cook swept quickly across the Atlantic, where she had become a rising star as a judge on hit cookery competition The Taste.
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.’

ABC's flagship show Good Morning America featured a two-minute news report on the trial of the Grillo sisters yesterday, but within hours the network also broadcast a promotional clip for Nigella's new show

The source added that the channel had ‘zero tolerance’ towards drugs and claimed bad publicity would mean no production company ‘will want to touch her’.
ABC’s flagship show Good Morning America featured a two-minute news report on the trial of the Grillo sisters yesterday – but within hours the network also broadcast a promotional clip for The Taste.
The ABC source said Miss Lawson would have been paid more than £200,000 per episode.
The show has also been commissioned by Channel 4, which yesterday said filming for the ten-episode series had finished and will be screened in Britain early next year.

He has said he was belatedly told of her drug use not just by the Grillos, but also his daughter Phoebe, 18, and other staff. Defending Francesca Grillo, barrister Karina Arden said Mr Saatchi and Miss Lawson’s versions of events were ‘poles apart’.
Prosecutor Jane Carpenter, who argued the case should proceed, said: ‘The suggestion that these defendants are sacrificial lambs in order to discredit Miss Lawson I do not accept at all.’ 
Judge Robin Johnson ruled that the trial could go ahead, saying he was happy the Grillos could have a fair trial.
The case will now proceed against the sisters who are alleged to had been lavishly spending for years – on everything from expensive hotels and designer shopping to costly flights and taxi journeys – before they were rumbled.
Astonishingly, the couple’s suspicions were aroused only when the women’s expenditure on household credit cards rocketed from £10,000 to £50,000 a month, the court heard.

'#TEAMNIGELLA': HIGH PROFILE SUPPORTERS TWEET BACKING FOR CHEF

Thousands voiced their support for Miss Lawson on Twitter yesterday – sending tweets at the rate of about 500 a minute.
She rewarded them by posting a link to a ‘Holiday Hotcake’ recipe, saying she wanted to ‘show thanks for all your support & to those who hashtag teamNigella’.
The celebrity cook has more than 470,000 followers on Twitter. Fellow cookery writer Tom Parker Bowles tweeted: ‘Hypocrisy, bile and bulls***. @Nigella_Lawson will always rock. Wonderful writer, brilliant cook #TeamNigella’.

Nigella has used her Twitter feed to reach out to her 480,000+ followers who have sent messages of support

Baking it better: The chef, who shot to fame as Britain's domestic goddess, tweeted a cake recipe 'to show thanks'

TV host Piers Morgan said: ‘This relentless beating up on @Nigella_Lawson - in every sense - is disgusting. She’s a lovely lady, who’s been through hell in her life.’
Rosa Monckton, Princess Diana’s friend and Miss Lawson’s sister-in-law, wrote: ‘A man scorned is much more dangerous than a woman.’
Fan Peter Rush tweeted: ‘Nigella, your reputation remains untarnished for me and millions of others too.’
Another supporter, Ruth Cherry, wrote: ‘Seriously, other than Charles Saatchi, is there anyone who isn’t TeamNigella?’

Star backing: High profile tweeters such as Piers Morgan and Tom Parker Bowles voiced their support for Miss Lawson, above

At first Miss Lawson and Mr Saatchi were willing to keep employing the sisters while they paid the money back, but called the police when the girls rejected the offer.
Francesca even told Mr Saatchi ‘it would be humiliating to live in the house on less pay and she would rather go to jail’.
Opening the £685,000 case, prosecutor Jane Carpenter QC told a jury of five women and seven men at Isleworth crown court in west London that the case was not about Mr Saatchi’s claims his ex-wife was a cocaine addict, but about ‘fraud motivated by greed’.
Miss Carpenter said: ‘This trial relates to the high life lived by Francesca and Elisabetta Grillo – the sort of life you may often see portrayed in glossy magazines.

Fraud charges: Sisters Elisabetta (left) and Francesca (right) Grillo arriving at court yesterday

‘We say they did so in a greedy and fraudulent free-for-all, abusing the trust of their employers in a four-year spending spree.’ Miss Carpenter claimed Francesca, 35, was the biggest fraudster over the four years, racking up bills totalling £580,000, while Elisabetta, 41, accounted for £105,000. Each woman denies a single count of fraud.
The pair were previously housed for free by their employers but now live together in Central London after being sacked.
They were initially employed by Miss Lawson, described in court as ‘a cookery writer’, to ‘ensure the smooth running’ of the household and help with the children.
Francesca was paid £28,000 a year and had worked for the couple for a decade, while her sister began working for Miss Lawson and her late husband John Diamond 14 years ago and was paid £25,000.
Both were provided with Coutts credit cards in their own names on Mr Saatchi’s Conarco company account. It was made clear, the prosecutor said, that these were not for personal purchases unless agreed by Miss Lawson or Mr Saatchi.

MEANWHILE, SAATCHI'S NEW LOVER TRINNY SPEAKS OF HER COCAINE FIGHT

Trinny Woodhall, pictured with boyfriend Charles Saatchi, has told how drug and alcohol turned her into a 'fake, lying, thieving, cheating person'

TV presenter Trinny Woodall has revealed her battle with cocaine addiction – and fears her young daughter may follow in her footsteps.
The fashion guru and socialite, who is now dating Charles Saatchi, told how the drug and alcohol turned her into a ‘fake, lying, thieving, cheating person’.
The former What Not To Wear presenter, who has been sober for 23 years, began drinking and taking drugs at 16 after moving from boarding school to a day school in London. She said she was a shy teenager who was insecure about her looks as she suffered from ‘chronic acne’. 
Watched by 70-year-old multi-millionaire art collector Mr Saatchi as she took part in the debate, she said: ‘My parents were still abroad and I lived with a sister who was four years older and she had glamorous friends and I so desperately wanted to fit in. 
‘One evening I was presented with cocaine and I wanted to take it. I had very long hair and I swept down and split five grams of cocaine on the floor and everybody was p****d off with me but I took it. 
‘I thought, “I have got to have some bravado here”. I remember that I suddenly had this confidence and I had lacked it until then enormously. It was fun for three or four years. I did it at weekends and my friends did it, it was a right of passage.’
In her 20s she developed a second addiction, this time to alcohol.
‘I had a bottle of vodka a night and I took cocaine and I started to get into trouble,’ she said. ‘It ended in me losing jobs which I pretended were better than they were and I ended up feeling lonely and isolated.’ 

But the court heard how in June 2012, Mr Saatchi’s company accountant Rahul Gajjar investigated spending on both cards and found the bills had risen from ‘£10,000-£20,000 a month to £50,000 a month’.
The investigation found there had been large sums spent on long taxi journeys and in luxury shops such as Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Miu Miu and Prada. Miss Carpenter said: ‘There was also regular large cash withdrawals which made Mr Gajjar more suspicious.
A meeting was arranged where both sisters admitted extensive personal expenditure and were thanked for their honesty, the jury was told, and Francesca said that she wanted to pay the money back. 

But at a further meeting in July last year, the tone changed and both women refused to continue working on a reduced salary. After a final attempt by Mr Gajjar to find an amicable solution, in August 2012 the sisters were arrested.
Miss Carpenter claimed the women would say their ‘exorbitant’ spending was in exchange for keeping silent about Miss Lawson’s alleged heavy cocaine use.
The prosecutor added: ‘It is anticipated they will claim Mr Saatchi and Miss Lawson permitted them to use the credit cards to buy themselves presents and withdraw cash because of the long hours they worked.
‘The defendants’ case is that Miss Lawson’s alleged drug use and the defendants’ knowledge of it materially affected Miss Lawson’s attitude to the defendants’ spending.’ The case continues.