Nigella Lawson used drugs every three days at family home, former assistant tells court

Elisabetta Grillo (left) and her sister Francesca at Isleworth Crown Court yesterday (PA)

Nigella Lawson was today accused in court of failing to tell the truth in the witness box about her cocaine habit.

Ms Lawson’s former personal assistant Elisabetta Grillo told the jury she had seen evidence of the TV cook’s drug use “every three days” at the family’s Belgravia home.

Ms Grillo said she saw rolled-up banknotes and white powder “regularly” as she cleaned the house.

Ms Lawson’s daughter, Mimi, told the PA that the Domestic Goddess smoked cannabis with her children, the court heard. The cook’s moods also swung wildly between “kisses” and being “mean”, the jury was told.

Ms Lawson told Isleworth Crown Court last week she had taken cocaine only once, in 2010, during her 10-year marriage to multi-millionaire art collector Charles Saatchi.

Today Ms Grillo was asked by her counsel Anthony Metzer QC: “Was Ms Lawson telling the truth?” “No,” she replied. “I saw more stuff before that.”

But the PA admitted she had never seen her employer take drugs or raised the subject with her because it would be “too embarrassing”.

However Ms Grillo told the court she was certain that Ms Lawson knew that she knew about her drug abuse – but Mr Saatchi did not know.

Before the 2003 marriage, Ms Grillo claimed she had found “a little funny envelope of white powder” on top of the “loo toilet” in the family home in Shepherds Bush.

Ms Lawson had previously told the jury she had taken cocaine six times with her then husband John Diamond when he had terminal cancer.

When Ms Lawson married Mr Saatchi and moved into the Eaton Square home, Ms Grillo claimed she would find what she described as evidence of drug abuse “regularly”.

She suggested Ms Lawson had a box in the shape of a book where the PA found jewellery and white powder.

Ms Grillo also said that Ms Lawson had always hoped to “change” Mr Saatchi “but he never did [change]”.

The PA said Mr Saatchi shouted at his then wife and children and Ms Lawson confided to her that she had considered leaving him. “She said it was difficult to live with him but she loved him. She thought he would change but obviously he never did.”

Ms Grillo, 41, and her sister Francesca, 35, deny defrauding Ms Lawson and Mr Saatchi of £685,000 by using corporate credit cards to buy holidays and designer clothes.

Elisabetta Grillo said today she had never been told not to use the credit card for personal transactions and that Ms Lawson told her to buy anything from clothes and shoes to food. “I have done nothing wrong,” she told the jury.

The case continues.