Names and faces

Nigella Lawson said Thursday that having her private life scrutinized in a London courtroom was “mortifying” but she is putting the case behind her. The celebrity cook testified last month at the fraud trial of two former aides, who were ultimately acquitted of funding a luxury lifestyle with credit cards loaned to them by Lawson and her ex-husband Charles Saatchi. The trial was overshadowed by allegations about Lawson’s and Saatchi’s domestic life, including claims that Lawson regularly used cocaine. She denied regular drug use, although she admitted taking cocaine a handful of times. Lawson, 53, told ABC’s Good Morning America on Thursday that “to have not only your private life but distortions of your private life put on display is mortifying.” She insisted that she has moved on. “Since then I’ve eaten a lot of chocolate, had a very good Christmas and I’m into the New Year,” she added. Lawson, author of How To Be A Domestic Goddess, was on the show to promote The Taste, a TV cooking show in which she stars with Anthony Bourdain.

A lawyer who let slip J.K. Rowling’s secret thriller-writer identity has been fined the equivalent of $1,645 for breaching client confidentiality rules. Chris Gossage of London law firm Russells Solicitors - which represents Rowling - told a friend of his wife that the Harry Potter creator was author of The Cuckoo’s Calling, published last year under the name Robert Galbraith. The friend tweeted the information, and it was followed up by The Sunday Times. The law firm apologized and paid damages to Rowling for the leak. The Solicitors Regulation Authority says it issued Gossage a written rebuke for disclosing confidential information about a client to a third party. The ruling was dated Nov. 26 but published this week. Sales of the thriller rocketed after Rowling was outed as its author.