TV chef in pay-out to ex-stepmother

Published on Saturday 29 November 2008 18:52

CELEBRITY chef James Martin has been forced to pay his former stepmother damages and destroy copies of his autobiography after branding her "the ugliest woman I have ever met".

Martin, 36, who hosts Saturday Kitchen on BBC1, made the claims in his book Driven: Cooking In The Fast Lane, describing Sarah Beth Briggs, a concert pianist, as a "wicked stepmother" and controversially claiming that she had callously burned his childhood toys, baby photos and clothes.

Briggs, also 36, who married the chef's father after he divorced his first wife, has now won damages and an apology, and the first version of the autobiography, parts of which were serialised in a newspaper, has been pulped.

She said: "My jaw dropped as I read the extraordinary allegations. Apart from James describing me as 'the ugliest woman I'd ever met', something I can't pass comment on in comparison to the circles of beautiful people with whom he now mixes, he had conjured up a painful scene of my burning 'every scrap' of his childhood – 'baby pictures, school reports, toys and clothes'.

"It was wholly untrue. I had never destroyed anything belonging to James. Reading on, I became even more perplexed. I was doomed to be the 'wicked stepmother' – seemingly never allowed to become anything else."

Briggs became Martin's stepmother at the age of 22 after marrying events manager Ian Martin. She says she had thought that they had a reasonable relationship after he attended their wedding at stately home Castle Howard.

The autobiography is billed as a frank and hard-hitting story about the Martin's early "working class life in Yorkshire", his loves and learning to foxtrot on Strictly Come Dancing.

The claims appeared during The Mail on Sunday's serialisation of the book in October.

A statement said:

"Mr Martin accepts it was untrue to say his father's then girlfriend cruelly destroyed childhood mementoes of him and his sister. We are happy to report this."

Briggs divorced Martin's father after four years of marriage.