The move comes after Lawson's US TV series The Taste was axed last year following a big drop in viewership.
|||She first captivated viewers 16 years ago on her saucy cookery show Nigella Bites, where she seemed to spend as much time licking utensils as chopping carrots, but has Nigella Lawson finally fallen out of love with TV? For I can disclose that the 56-year-old is shutting her television company, Pabulum Productions.
The move comes after Nigella’s U.S. cookery series The Taste was axed last year following a dramatic drop in viewing figures, while her most recent BBC effort, Simply Nigella, was mocked by fans after it featured the television cook demonstrating how to make avocado on toast.
Now she has placed Pabulum Productions into voluntary liquidation, meaning the company will be closed and its assets liquidated. It was first incorporated in 2001, shortly after Nigella Bites launched to great acclaim. Its name, Pabulum, is derived from the Latin term for food.
As the sole director of the company, Nigella will get an estimated windfall of £2.24m, which is the amount liquidators expect to be left in the business after it settles outstanding payments, including debts of £320 918 and a tax bill of £20 923.However, a source says she’s unlikely to be retiring from our screens just yet. Instead Nigella, whose father is former Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson, may just be executing a canny tax-planning manoeuvre.
The current Chancellor, George Osborne, is said to be planning a tax raid on one-man companies across the public sector, which will include highly paid BBC stars. Although Nigella (right) has three other companies registered at Companies House, they are all dormant.
A move to operating as a sole trader would also mean she is not under obligation to file public accounts at Companies House.
The former Domestic Goddess is no doubt still trying to get her finances in order after splitting from art dealer Charles Saatchi in 2013 on the grounds of his ‘unreasonable behaviour’, following a row at a restaurant in Mayfair where he was seen ‘tweaking’ her nose and holding his hands around her throat.
Nigella is said to have walked away from the marriage with no higher financial settlement than her cooking appliances, and last month I disclosed she’d even had to take out a mortgage on her new bachelorette pad.
A spokesman for Nigella refuses to be drawn, however, only saying: ‘We wouldn’t comment on financial matters.’
Daily Mail