London:
Art collector Charles Saatchi has been cautioned over a dramatic assault on his TV presenter wife Nigella Lawson captured by a tabloid photographer just outside a fancy London restaurant.
Ms Lawson 's spokesman, Mark Hutchinson, confirmed that she and her children had left the family home but declined to comment further.
The Daily Mirror said that Mr Saatchi, 70, had accepted the official warning after a five-hour grilling over dramatic photographs published in its sister paper, the Sunday People, which showed him grasping Lawson's throat. (
The photos that broke the story)
Under British law, a caution is a formal warning given to someone who admits a minor offense. It carries no penalty, but it can be used as evidence of bad character if a person is later prosecuted for a different crime.
When asked about Mr Saatchi, London's Metropolitan Police said that a 70-year-old man had been cautioned for assault after voluntarily attending a police station following an investigation into the pictures published by the Sunday People.
The force didn't mention Mr Saatchi by name - authorities in Britain rarely identify suspects who haven't been charged - but such statements are routinely understood as confirmation of media reports.
Contact information for Mr Saatchi couldn't immediately be located, but the collector had earlier told the London Evening Standard newspaper that the photos misrepresented a "playful tiff." (
Read: Saatchi dismisses alleged abused as 'playful tiff')
Mr Saatchi, an Evening Standard columnist, said "the pictures are horrific but give a far more drastic and violent impression of what took place."
"About a week ago, we were sitting outside a restaurant having an intense debate about the children, and I held Nigella's neck repeatedly while attempting to emphasize my point," he was quoted as saying. "There was no grip, it was a playful tiff."
He also told the paper the couple "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."
The couple married in 2003 and live in London with Ms Lawson's son and daughter from her marriage to journalist John Diamond, who died of cancer in 2001, and Saatchi's daughter from a previous marriage.
Ms Lawson gained fame with her 1998 best-seller "How To Eat" and subsequent "How to Be a Domestic Goddess" (2000) and is one of Britain's best-known cookbook writers, as well as the host of foodie TV shows including "Nigella Bites" and ABC's cooking program "The Taste."
Saatchi, co-founder of the Saatchi & Saatchi ad agency, owns one of London's biggest private art galleries. He was the main patron of the Young British Artists movement of the 1990s, which made household names of artists including Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.