Nigella

Years ago, I used to listen to talks by John Diamond on Radio 4. He was a great talker, soft-spoken and very clear. He was also a very good writer, with a fine wit and good insight and a sharp turn of phrase. I vaguely remember reading then he had a wife and kids, although he never mentioned them in his talks. I was grateful for that because I hate writers who raid their own lives and lay them out in the media for the world to see.

When John Diamond got sick with cancer and had to have most of his tongue removed, I remember thinking how awful it was for him, a radio person, to lose his ability to talk. I also thought how unfair it was on his kids, who were very young.

It was years before I realised his wife was Nigella Lawson. She is the daughter of Nigel Lawson, one-time Chancellor of the Exchequer under Thatcher. I thought then: it takes a special kind of narcissist to make up a name for a child based on his own. When Nigella Lawson began appearing on TV in cookery shows, I also remember thinking it was good she was able to support her kids. I didn't know then she was already in tow with Charles Saatchi.

I don't watch cookery programmes - the less time I spend in the kitchen these days the better it suits me. That said, I do watch the Hairy Bikers but that's more for the bikes and the scenery than anything. I suspect Nigella's audience is mainly men, most of them staring right down her cleavage. She's done a good job of creating the Nigella brand. She's got TV shows in the US, I believe. Or at least she had until the Grillo girls and Charles Saatchi stepped in last week.

You have to hand it to the Grillo girls' defence team: it was a master stroke to depict Nigella Lawson as a cocaine-addled nutjob handing out drugs to her kids. And I suppose you have to hand it to Charles Saatchi too for fuelling the doubts about Nigella's reliability by adding yet more information about the drug use. So the Grillo girls got off and Charles Saatchi got his revenge on his ex-wife. He strikes me as a man you wouldn't want to beat at Scrabble unless you had your running shoes on and, of course, he's going to get his revenge on the Grillo girls too by suing them. Well, he's rich. He can afford to do it and, as a friend of his put it this week, he couldn't care less what anybody thinks of him. And Nigella? Well, chances are, given the squeamishness of US television people she'll lose her contracts there.

Of course, she also has the press and TV to thank for the publicity she's received over the past weeks. I switched off BBC 'national and international news' last night because the main item was Nigella Lawson. But ITV and Sky news were the same. Is there really nothing else more important happening
in the world or have we become so obsessed with 'celebrities' we're in danger of disappearing up our own erse? Or could it be that the media hate successful women, especially the ones who don't fall over themselves to bare their souls - or anything else - in the press?

I googled Nigella Lawson and read a wee bit about her. Her mother was a depressive and probably a drunk and battered her kids. If they hadn't been a politician's kids, they'd have been whisked off to a place of safety by social workers. In addition to losing her first husband to throat cancer, she also lost her sister to breast cancer. No much luck in life so far. And it doesn't look as if things will be getting better any time soon.