To My Foodie Friend, Nigella.

... No such luxury for Nigella, thanks to law courts that operate with less ethics or seeming guidelines for the care of individual lives than reality television.

I'm fed up with a law court system that allows no privacy for the innocent. It’s my by-line again: civilisation is a movement toward privacy, an Orwellian state the opposite.

I like food.

I like alcoholic beverages.

I like Nigella. She is one of my many food heroes.

And like Nigella, but before I got a career going in this kindy of a country, I liked an occasional toke or a puff. 1986 and 1987, frankly, I barely remember, other than they were great … I think. The point being the fortunate thing for me is that part of my life is private, unless I choose to write on it.

No such luxury for Nigella, thanks to law courts that operate with less ethics or seeming guidelines for the care of individual lives than reality television.

So Nigella likes to alter her consciousness the very odd time also: great. Married to the monster she was, latterly, that would appear a sane approach to her life. Regardless, it's none of our damned business. Why don't we grow up: it's not news.

I've written on this before in relation to the Scott Guy murder trial. The public doesn't need to know all these prurient ruddy details. Nigella is not the accused, why is her life all over the tabloids for the titillation of the small people with no lives? Why has a justice system been turned into a tool for Saatchi to go about the deliberate public humiliation, further abuse, therefore, and destruction of my effervescent foodie mate, his wife? This is only injustice: nothing else. Under Western social(alist) democracy, we are forced to lead lives sacrificed to the selfish entitlement of each other: have no doubt it is in the name of this society the mainstream media are currently cannibalising, and eating alive, Nigella. It's the barbarism of altruism and justice served up in a goldfish bowl for entertainment of the mob. It's dark history lies in taking your kids out to watch the public executions of the guillotine, not understanding you're laughing at the state built gallows of your own life: don't kid yourself there is any noble purpose served by this.

There has to be a better, respectful, private way to go about justice than these public show trials Western jurisprudence is based on. Just as there has to be a civilised, private way to live, without tax officers given carte blanche to trawl legally through our most intimate source documents and details - yeah, that's linked also; you bet ya: read my blog. There is no middle way between a freedom anchored in privacy, and this viciousness of totalitarian mob rule, which is the rule of the sneer and the gaping maw.

So enough. As a single voice of that number whose lives you add value to, Nigella, keep your head high and proud. You've earned that. Thank you for the happiness you've shared with the family in this house. Saatchi, the reporters, the photographers: they're execrable; probably couldn't cook toast, none of them. You’re class.

I'm ignoring the coverage from this point; I won't give my money to any publication dragging my foodie friend to the stocks they would clasp her rudely in for our perverse, uninvited inspection. I look forward only to catching up with Nigella again on New Zealand's Food Channel. Indeed, I can’t wait, because the important value she gifts us, is that joie de vivre exists in her every recipe: this weekend we'll be making for ourselves her Christmas present, a recipe freely given, a generousness unknown to her dropkick ex, and those who would harry and harass her:

All the while I've got this martini in hand raised permanently in salute, affection, and solidarity, at least until the wowsers known as that Arrogance of Altruists in the Fortress of Legislation will no doubt some day make that illegal. And yes, that's linked also, because Nigella's life is the repudiation of wowserism. That's why I like Nigella.

Footnote: for those who’ve argued with me in the past that ‘foodie’ is a class ridden term, oppressive of the masses, look at me, I’m backing away, quietly, quickly, trying not to provoke your particular brand of radshitzism, hoping you’ll go away..