Nigella Lawson is bringing her culinary expertise to the iconic Bake Off tent as the new judge of the hit Channel 4 series. The 66-year-old joins fellow judge Paul Hollywood and hosts Noel Fielding and Alison Hammond for the new series, which will see a fresh batch of bakers battle for the Star Baker title.
Nigella's debut has already been met with widespread critical acclaim, with the television cook praised for breathing new life into the show. The critical response is no surprise given Nigella's extensive TV work. After becoming a household name with her debut cookbook, How To Eat, in 1998, Nigella went on to host numerous cooking programmes, including her Channel 4 cooking show, Nigella Bites, and Nigella: At My Table.
© Instagram / Channel 4But while Nigella's career went from strength to strength in the early noughties, she was navigating ups and downs in her romantic life. From suffering through grief to overcoming "abuse", the food writer has had her love life play out in the public eye.
Death of first husband
Nigella met her first husband John Diamond, in 1989, while they were both working at The Telegraph newspaper. "I was a journalist - not a food journalist, but I did do quite a bit of cooking. As a consequence I cooked for editors quite a bit," she later told BBC Radio 2. "[He] said to me, 'You always talk about food in this really confident way. You should write about it!' So I did."
They married three years later, in 1992, in Venice, Italy. The couple had two children together, daughter Cosima, now 31, and son Bruno, age 29. However, tragically, John was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1995 and passed away in 2001 aged 47.
© Getty Images"I took a fortnight off," the mother-of-two told The Telegraph shortly after his death. "But I'm not a great believer in breaks. I don't want to be rattling around inside my own head. I did feel I was spiralling into a Kathy Burke character and tried going out, but I prefer it here.
"Filming keeps me busy. It absorbs me. Of course it is displacing certain thoughts but, in a way, I don't think grieving should be your full-time job. That seems a rather modern idea. To act as if you don't have a life is probably not sensible, especially when you have children."
Public breakdown of second marriage
In 2003, two years after John’s death, Nigella tied the knot again with Charles Saatchi, an art collector and advertising agency founder. He had been friends with her late husband since the late 1990s.
However, their marriage broke down ten years later. Charles, now 83, was seen in a picture taken by The Sunday People with his hand around her throat as they dined outside a Mayfair restaurant, and he accepted a police caution for assault.
© Getty ImagesCharles insisted to the Evening Standard that it was a "playful tiff". However, Nigella - who filed for divorce a month after the incident - later stated that her ex-husband had "grabbed me by the throat" as she detailed "bullying and abuse" in court during a fraud trial in relation to two of her personal assistants, as reported the BBC.
A happier private chapter
In an interview with The Guardian in 2020, Nigella revealed that she was "really surprised" to finally feel happiness, "because [she] didn’t think [happiness] was one of her gifts". When reflecting on her divorce, she added: "I’m not sure I would have thought I’d be a mended person, which I am."
Nigella is reported to have moved out of the seven-bedroom mansion in Belgravia that she shared with Charles and into her own £5 million Chelsea mews house after the split. She has not revealed publicly if she has dated anyone since or if she has a current partner.
