Charles Saatchi has all the makings of a James Bond villain. He is masterfully powerful with a mottled international background: born in Baghdad, raised in Hampstead, he’s Jewish and obsessed with brash American culture. Saatchi clawed his way up through the advertising industry, creating an empirewith his brother that swayed elections (favouring Margaret Thatcher) and sold addictive vices (Silk Cut cigarettes) to the masses. He marries beautiful women, drives flash cars and builds lairs in abandoned paint factories and old government buildings. Almost as an afterthought, he has become the world’s first art-collecting superstar, perhaps the only one with real name recognition beyond the art world. Yet he never shows up for events and rarely addresses outsiders. Until now.…[link]