Viv Nicholson

Vivian Nicholson (3 April 1936 – 11 April 2015) became publicly known overnight in the United Kingdom when she told the media she would "spend, spend, spend" after her husband Keith won £152,319 (equivalent to £2.96 million in 2015, adjusted for inflation) on the football pools in 1961.^[1][2] Nicholson became the subject of tabloid news stories for many years.

By her own admission, she found it hard to cope with the psychological effects of the money Keith had won. She came to feel distanced from the people she had lived among, who in turn could no longer relate to her, and developed an ever greater longing for a much more affluent area.

After her husband Keith died in a car crash on 30 October 1965,^[3] Nicholson's fortune rapidly dwindled to nothing: banks and tax creditors both deemed her bankrupt and declared that all the money, and everything she had acquired with it, belonged not to her but to Keith's estate.

Nicholson won a three-year legal battle to gain £34,000 from her husband's estate,^[4] but rapidly lost it all through bad investments. She relocated to Malta, but after she assaulted a policeman, the Maltese authorities deported her back to Britain amid a storm of tabloid publicity.^[3] She entered a mental home to escape from her third husband, who abused her during the four days they lived together; the marriage lasted only thirteen weeks. .

She made many attempts to regain both her public profile and her lost wealth, such as recording a single (entitled "Spend Spend Spend", written by her brother) and appearing in a strip club singing "Big Spender". None of these efforts proved successful. After opening a short-lived boutique, she ended up penniless and, by 1976, claimed that she could not even afford to bury her fourth husband when he died (and with whom she had broken up three years earlier).

In 1976, Nicholson co-wrote an autobiography with Stephen Smith, entitled Spend, Spend, Spend which was dramatised for the BBC's Play for Today series by Jack Rosenthal. Spend, Spend, Spend (1977) was directed by John Goldschmidt (who won a BAFTA award for the filmed play) and stars Susan Littler and John Duttine.^[5]

A photograph of Nicholson was used on the sleeve of The Smiths' single "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now". Previously Morrissey had borrowed a line from Nicholson's autobiography for the song "Still Ill" ("Under the iron bridge we kissed, and although I ended up with sore lips..."). Another picture of Nicholson taken at Castleford pit was used on the German release of "Barbarism Begins At Home" and on the programme for the Meat Is Murder tour. A photo of Nicholson painting at an easel was used for the cover of a 1987 re-release of "The Headmaster Ritual", however, having become a Jehovah's Witness in 1979,^[6] she objected to her image being used for the single's cover due to the use of an expletive in the song's lyrics ("Spineless bastards all...").^[7]

A successful musical based on Nicholson's life – Spend Spend Spend – debuted in 1998 and subsequently ran on the West End.^[8]

Nicholson died at Pinderfields hospital, Wakefield, aged 79, on 11 April 2015, after having had a stroke and dementia.^[9]

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