So it's alleged nigella took drugs with her kids?

[Bradsplit]

In the trial prosecution evidence. Aha.

Are cases involving famous people necessarily more important than cases involving non-famous people?

Well who knows. The court case I think is really quite trivial to everyone except for the participants.

Well, we see these people on our TV screens and we read about them so there is more public interest than if they were people we didn't know.

Also the court case is important to them because of PR as well as other things.

'The court case I think is really quite trivial to everyone except for the participants'

It's in all our newspapers and we are discussing it possibly affect futures

Claig his accountant thought the sums comparatively trivial for several years, not that his client was being defrauded.

imvvho - and I don't know either of them, but this is my gut instinct - this all went tits up when she decided she wanted to break America. That is when the household accounts became more important, all of a sudden - it's like there was a decision that someone wanted to control everything/the other a bit more tightly and suddenly everything was under a lot more scrutiny. And when the other party would not back down and be controlled, it all started getting a bit more nasty.

Might all be cobblers, of course, but that is my gut reaction.

In what way could this case possibly affect anyone's future except for the two women on trial? The allegations might affect Nigella's future career in America. The nasty divorce and public badmouthing will probably affect the children involved. I don't suppose the bad PR has had much effect on Saachi, but I don't think he can possibly make that much worse.

The papers/media have always been full of rubbish and will no doubt be filled with more once this has blown over. The only wider impact has been the discussion about domestic violence as it's relatively rare to be so visually documented.

Anyway .. hang in there Nigella .. and keep your friends close!!

And had CS wanted to protect her he would never have embarked upon this whole strategy of pushing the Grillo's toward court. He agreed a way for the sisters to repay their debt. Then he changed his mind and his accountant presented them with a different plan. They did not accept the new plan and the relationship deteriorated until the sisters were arrested - at whose behest? Not NL if she was trying to get them to cover for her, as is alleged.

I don't really want to pass opinion on the issue being discussed but want to ask an irrelevant question, for which I apologise in advance.

Some of the posts on this thread appear to me to be highlighted in a pale grey (yes, the deleted ones, but also some others). Is it just my eyes or is anyone else seeing that? Does it mean those posts are about to be deleted?!

If he'd actually strangled her to death on camera Claig, you'd find a reason to excuse him.

waterlego, you may have the OP's posts highlighted? It helps to find them in amongst 15 pages of drivel informed comment !

"And had CS wanted to protect her he would never have embarked upon this whole strategy of pushing the Grillo's toward court"

As far as I understand it lawyers were involved in the Grillos case before the retaurant photo incident

'Claig his accountant thought the sums comparatively trivial for several years, not that his client was being defrauded.'

I know Saatchi is rich, but I guess we all have different interpretations about what is trivial.

"Elisabetta Grillo made the complaint after she and her sister Francesca were asked to repay £685,000 via direct debits taken out of their monthly salaries, the jury was told.

The pair spent up to £37,000 per month between them on clothes and holidays using Charles Saatchi’s credit card, it is alleged."

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10480954/Nigella-Lawson-and-aides-ran-up-100k-credit-card-bills-each-month-which-Saatchi-paid-off-court-hears.html

The headlines say that the accused say they were treated like 'filipono slaves' on the production of over expenditure to them.

Racist, much?

The point is the accountant said in court today that he ignored the spending for four years as it was not the most important thing on his plate. Reported pretty much everywhere...

sorry that comment was to claig not howrude, obvs..

• sorry off topic -

waterlego, I am seeing that too I always have OP's post highlighted in green but this is some other posts from various different posters highlighted in the same gray as the deleted posts (but text still fully visible). Don't know what it means!

"Charles Saatchi and Nigella Lawson considered monthly credit card bills of tens of thousands of pounds run up by their assistants to be "trivial matters", with Saatchi becoming concerned only when the sums reached an average of £76,000 a month, a court has been told.

Francesca and Elisabetta Grillo, two of five of the couple's assistants to have company credit cards, were averaging bills of £48,000 and £28,000 a month respectively when their spending first began to cause alarm, the art dealer's finance director, Rahul Gajjar, told a jury at Isleworth crown court."

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/28/nigella-lawson-charles-saatchi-court-accountant

Yes, but there was a point when it became non-trivial

Doesn't surprise me given that she's actually had a very sad life.....

I have zero sympathy for either of them.

Claig --
It doesn't matter what anyone else's definition of trivial might be. All that matters is what the accountant thought.

"I am no longer sure he is as bad as has been painted.
He has allegedly been defrauded, he has been divorced, his public reputation as been damaged and now he is in a court case to recover money that was allegedly stolen and Nigella seemingly "made it clear she was reconsidering whether to give evidence"
LOL at the passive voice there.
He choked his famous and photogenic wife, choosing a restaurant as the place in which to do it.
He filed for divorce.
He made various statements to the press that ended up backfiring on him in spectacular fashion.

So not only is he a horrible man, he is an idiot too.

He is not involved in this court case solely to recover money; it is unlikely in any case that he will recover more than 10p on the pound from the sisters. He has made it clear with his statement about NL's alleged drug use that his interest is in flinging mud at Nigella.

The money is long gone and the sisters are now unemployable. Their only hope of ever making money ever again is to strip for Playboy, or via some sort of tell all book, and CS stands to be just as much damned in that book as Nigella. Their credibility stands at about zero so any revelations in a possible book would have to be taken with a shovelful of salt.

Are you sure that he filed for divorce?

Yes, he may not win the case. We will have to wait and see what the evidence is.

"He said Saatchi and Lawson, who have since divorced acrimoniously, had then offered to allow the women to remain in their employment and living rent free in Lawson's flat in Battersea, but to have their salaries of £28,000 and £25,000 deducted by £1,000 for Francesca and £250 for Elisabetta "until they are satisfied they have been repaid".

Asked by Jane Carpenter, prosecuting, how the sisters had responded to the proposal, Gajjar said: "I remember a reference: 'We're being treated worse than Filipino slaves.' They were absolutely against the proposal."

He said he had prepared a letter inviting the two women to agree to the proposal and admit they had "fraudulently stolen money", but that they had refused to sign it, saying had they done so they would have been tied to the company "for the rest of their lives"."

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/28/nigella-lawson-charles-saatchi-court-accountant

I don't have a degree in maths but if they ran up 700k over four years then their average expenditure can't have been 76k per month, and even if it reached 76k in one month towards the end of those four years then it can't have been tens of thousands every other month during that period. The numbers simply don't add up. Not saying they did not misuse the credit cards, btw, just that this - like a lot of other things about this case - does not really add up (literally)

The whole business of the spending was discovered before the divorce and the photos. It seems that the ball was rolling before the photos and divorce.

teejwood, presumably the spending was small some months and only reached 76k at one or more months, and the 76k also seems to have included expenses for the business and was not all spent on the Grillos.