London - He emerged from his Chelsea home with a characteristic smirk and a dark glance, and girlfriend Trinny Woodall firmly on his arm.
Then Charles Saatchi proceeded to make a joke of yet another disturbing set of pictures of him sitting at an outside table at Scott’s, his favourite Mayfair restaurant, with a female partner in tears.
Last summer, it was this very restaurant - and, indeed, this very table - that was the location for the “throttling” lunch that spelled the end of Saatchi’s marriage to Nigella Lawson.
In pictures revealed in British newspapers on Sunday, he is seen there again. Only this time, it is Trinny, his girlfriend of almost a year, who is seen in serious distress, weeping over her ginger ale.
Saatchi looks on apparently unmoved, smoking cigarettes and drinking red wine.
At one point, Trinny removes her sunglasses to wipe away the tears. At another, she leaps to her feet, apparently shouting. A witness to the incident says that Saatchi glanced around him to check if anyone had noticed what was going on.
Lawyers for the couple deny there was an argument of any sort. But Trinny, 50, who friends declare is “the nicest woman in London”, appeared animated, even distraught at times.
After the meal, the pair left together in a taxi. Saatchi, 70, got up first and stood at the taxi rank while Trinny took a few moments, seemingly to compose herself, before joining him.
The parallels to the infamous Nigella incident are obvious. Those pictures, in which the multi-millionaire art collector repeatedly put his hands around Nigella’s throat to her evident distress, resulted in a police caution for him.
So, how did Saatchi explain this latest damaging contretemps? Standing outside his Chelsea home, the former advertising executive merely declared that he and Trinny were “unconsciously coupling”, twisting the phrase “consciously uncoupling”, coined by actress Gwyneth Paltrow to describe her divorce from Coldplay star Chris Martin.
Saatchi then ushered Woodall into a taxi, adding: “There, are you happy now?”
And off they went for Sunday lunch. Where? Why, to the very same table at Scott’s, of course.
Someone who knows both of them intimately insisted to me: “There is no story. They are very happy together.”
Until now, Saatchi and Woodall have found a certain peculiar contentment with each other.
The pair started dating only eight weeks after the schism with Nigella and before the trial of the Grillo sisters, the couple’s former housekeepers.
It was during the trial that Nigella admitted she occasionally used cocaine and Saatchi contended that his actions during their notorious lunch were merely intended to help his wife “focus”.
It was a strange time to begin a hunt for a new love - but Saatchi apparently selected Trinny from a shortlist drawn up by his second wife, Kay Hartenstein, to whom he is still close.
She was terribly worried that he was “falling apart” without a woman by his side. Others on the list included Martha Fiennes, the newly single film-maker sister of actor Ralph.
I’m told that upon meeting Trinny, Saatchi murmured, horror struck: “My God! Those lips!” But despite his initial misgivings, the liaison became very serious, very quickly.
Trinny, too, wasn’t bothered by Saatchi’s reputation.
One friend asked her on her publicly accessible Instagram account last October: “I have a personal question. How can you date a man who tried to strangle his ex-wife? You are a smart woman, I can’t understand. You are worth so much more!” Trinny responded: “My darling girl - don’t believe what you read in the Press!!!!”
Within three months, Trinny was keeping a toothbrush and clothes at the house in Chelsea that Saatchi used to share with Nigella and her children.
He and Trinny dined out incessantly, often at Scott’s. During the Grillo trial in December, they seemed to be in high spirits.
Trinny, a recovering drink and drug addict, is notably more sensitive than Nigella, but she, too, seems to love the lifestyle Saatchi provides her with.
For example, over Christmas, Saatchi treated Trinny and her 10-year-old daughter Lyla to a Caribbean trip on a £25-million yacht. In February, he took her on a romantic break to Madrid to celebrate her 50th birthday.
A month ago came a surprising episode. Trinny and Saatchi were guests at the opening of superchef Alain Ducasse’s restaurant at the Bulgari Hotel in Knightsbridge.
It was the sort of event that Trinny and her socialite friends adore - but to observe the notoriously reclusive Saatchi enjoying blue lobster and purple artichoke with half of London’s canape society came as a shock.
All indications - until these new unsettling images - were of a very happy romance indeed. So why the tears? Friends of Saatchi’s were pressing the suggestion that Trinny may have been complaining of continuing back pain, as only four weeks ago she had a disc replaced.
That relatively major surgery saw her bed-bound for a week. She is contemplating facing the school holidays with her daughter in less than perfect health. The only clue to her condition is she is wearing thick-soled trainers rather than her usual heels.
Saatchi, meanwhile, knows only too well that his romance with Trinny has been a surprisingly effective tool in rehabilitating his image. If people believe he has been bullying her as well, he will lose the PR war he has fought heartily since his split from Nigella.
When contacted by a Sunday newspaper about the pictures, Saatchi denied there had been an argument. He emailed the reporter: “Why not send a photographer to Scott’s tomorrow lunchtime and I will give Trinny a good throttling in time for your deadline?” He again emailed the reporter saying: “Please don’t do this. There was no argument. This is so stupid.”
Finally he said: “Oh just run what you like,” he exclaimed. “How would you like it if someone was looking at you [when you were eating]? It is a lie. Ask Trinny. This is beyond comprehension. I don’t care what it looks like, you can ask me formally through my lawyer. How dare you. I give up.”
A letter from a lawyer acting for Trinny and Saatchi swiftly followed. - Daily Mail