Do we like Nigella Lawson?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Public support for trans people, a proper apology for her own past mistake, and nothing harmful turned up since.
Nigella Lawson was born in London in 1960 to Nigel Lawson, later Chancellor of the Exchequer under Thatcher, and Vanessa Salmon. She studied medieval and modern languages at Oxford, then wrote a restaurant column for the Spectator and worked at the Sunday Times. Her 1998 book How to Eat made her a name, and Channel 4's Nigella Bites turned her into a TV fixture.
The big public chapter was 2013. Photos showed her then-husband Charles Saatchi with his hand at her throat in a London restaurant, and he accepted a police caution for assault. He called it a “playful tiff”, which is a brave description of that picture. She was the one on the receiving end, and she didn't comment at the time.
Months later she gave evidence at the fraud trial of two former assistants, who were acquitted. She said she was “disappointed but unsurprised”, called it “a ridiculous sideshow of false allegations”, and said she was maliciously vilified without the right to respond. Lawson was never the defendant; she was dragged through it as a witness.
Since then the record is the right way round. In 2020 she shared an article by a former gender-critical feminist who changed her mind, with the comment “A still small voice of calm.” PinkNews also reports she donated in 2018 to a fundraiser for a trans student's funeral. I couldn't find anything from her on climate, migrants or vaccines, harmful or otherwise, and no sign she keeps dodgy company.
The recent news is a happy one. Channel 4 named her Prue Leith's replacement in January, and she said she was “uncharacteristically lost for words”. When the new series started in September, The Guardian and The Telegraph each gave her debut five stars, and the reviews praised her warmth and how she gives bakers real advice.
So: a cook who's been an ally for years, who owned a decades-old mistake without wriggling, and who got through a very public ordeal with her dignity intact. There's no pile of scandals here, and the one real stain has been dealt with.