(Picture: Rex Features)
Charles Saatchi has dismissed as a ‘playful tiff’ photographs that appear to show him seizing his wife Nigella Lawson by the throat.
In photographs the celebrity cook appears to be grimacing and was reportedly seen weeping following the incident.
The pictures, taken outside Scott’s restaurant in Mayfair in central London, emerged yesterday and Lawson appeared to move out of their home in Chelsea, west London.
Police are still deciding whether to begin an investigation into the reports.
But Saatchi told the Evening Standard: ‘There was no grip, it was a playful tiff. The pictures are horrific but give a far more drastic and violent impression of what took place.
‘Nigella’s tears were because we both hate arguing, not because she had been hurt.
‘We had made up by the time we were home. The paparazzi were congregated outside our house after the story broke yesterday morning, so I told Nigella to take the kids off till the dust settled.’
Lawson and Saatchi are said to be regular visitors to the upmarket restaurant in Mount Street, which claims to offer diners the ‘finest’ oysters and fish.
The couple wed in 2003 and she has two children, Cosima and Bruno, from her marriage to journalist John Diamond, who died of throat cancer in 2001.
She became a household name in 1998 with her first cookery book, How To Eat.
There had previously been no comment from either Lawson or Saatchi’s representatives.
Scotland Yard has not made any arrests and a spokesman said inquiries were ongoing to ‘establish the facts in order to assess whether an investigation is necessary’.
There was no sign of multi-millionaire art collector Saatchi at their home or his nearby gallery today.
Staff said he was not expected at the modern art gallery, or the launch of a new exhibition today.
Saatchi is notoriously publicity-shy and was not even at the opening night of his previous gallery on the Southbank in 2003 which was attended by some of the art world’s biggest names
