Saatchi Back In The Poo

One has to wonder why someone with Charles Saatchi’s intelligence – after all, he can’t have made his pile by not knowing one end of business from the other – returns time and again to the outside tables at Scott’s restaurant in Mayfair, where he had his well-documented domestic breakdown with Domestic Goddess (tm) Nigella Lawson last year, knowing there will be a snapper in attendance.

But return he does, and regularly enough for him to make an appearance in today’s Mail On Sunday, which could be bad news for the supposedly reclusive multi-millionaire. Stories kicked off in the MoS have a habit of getting legs in the Daily Mail the following week. And the reason he is in the MoS is, as with the bust-up with Ms Lawson, what looks like an altercation with his current partner.

After Nigella decided she could manage fine without Mr Happy, there appeared on the scene one Trinny Woodall (it may be my problem, and mine alone, but there’s something pretentious about that name. Well, whatever, eh?). The words of Caroline Aherne’s creation Mrs Merton come readily to mind, from the time she ambushed Paul Daniels’ partner Debbie McGee.

“So, what first attracted you to the millionaire [insert name here]?” – OK, Ms Woodall is rumoured to be worth a few bob, but Saatchi, by comparison, is minted. Or perhaps this is all evidence of more personal cynicism. But what is not in question is that this looked like an opportunistic meeting of minds from the start, whatever the reality. Now it looks ominously like it is in trouble.

The MoS, which may have been fastest on the draw with its wallet this time, was in no doubt as to what was happening outside Scott’s: “What did Saatchi say that made Trinny cry? Woodall in tears during row at the same restaurant table where her millionaire partner attacked ex-wife Nigella Lawson” howls the headline. The photos do not look good for Saatchi. So what have the two said?

Tellingly, Saatchi was tetchy when the MoS caught up with him, and both he and Ms Woodall have since made a statement through their lawyers. That means it’s potentially serious. And there is more bad news for Charlie Boy: the spinner who so ineptly tried to put the boot in on Nigella last time round, Andrew Hillgrove (aka The Twat In The Hat) has just been convicted over an unpaid £100K tax bill.

On the other hand, when it comes to putting the case of women who have suffered abusive relationships, the Mail is always able to call on either its own pundits, or, as happened with Saatchi, they can get a freelance like Melissa Kite (see her piece HERE) to remind readers what Nigella, and now Trinny, may (allegedly) have endured. And if there is disharmony chez Saatchi, that is what he’ll get.

A recluse who goes his domestic dirty laundry in public is not much of a recluse.