Vivian Nicholson was a British woman who became famous when she told the media she would "spend, spend, spend" after her husband Keith won £152,319 on the football pools in 1961. Nicholson became the subject of tabloid news stories for many years due to her and Keith's subsequent rapid spending of their fortune and her later chaotic life.
Early life
Nicholson was born Vivian Asprey on 3 April 1936 in Castleford near Leeds. Her father was a coal miner, but suffered from epilepsy, and so often was unable to work. Her mother was asthmatic. As the oldest child, she was expected to help with taking care of her younger brothers and sisters and scavenge for coal. Growing up in extreme poverty, she was not allowed to take up a scholarship she had won to art school. Having left school at age 14, she took work at the local liquorice factory making Pontefract cakes. She became pregnant at age 16 and married Matthew Johnson, but left him to marry her neighbour, Keith Nicholson, two years later. By 1961, she had four children.
Wealth
Keith won the pools on 30 September 1961. Nicholson and her husband's constant and lavish spending sprees over the next few years quickly depleted their fortune. By her own admission, she found it hard to cope with the psychological effects of the money Keith had won. Having no concept of how to manage and save money, Viv Nicholson admitted to becoming so consumed by spending money that she likened it at one point to an addiction to narcotics. Due to her out-of-control spending, she came to feel distanced from the people she had lived among, who in turn could no longer relate to her, and she developed an ever greater longing for a much more affluent lifestyle. After her husband Keith died in a car accident, Viv Nicholson's fortune rapidly dwindled to nothing: Banks and tax creditors 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. In 1968, Nicholson won a three-year legal battle to gain £34,000 from her husband's estate, but rapidly lost it all through more uncontrolled spending, as well as taxes, legal fees, unpaid bills, and bad investments.
Difficulties
In 1970, she relocated to Malta, but the following year, after she was arrested for assaulting a policeman, the Maltese authorities deported her, and she returned to Britain. She also remarried, but the marriage did not last. Her new husband, Brian Wright, later died in a car crash. She entered a mental home to escape from her next husband, a man named Graham Ellison, who abused her during the four days they lived together; the marriage lasted 13 weeks. Her fifth and last husband, Gary Shaw, died of a drug overdose. Her alcoholism became serious during her wealthy years, but continued for many years after she lost all her money. She eventually became sober. She made many attempts to regain both her public profile and her lost wealth, such as recording a song 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. In 1978, Nicholson co-wrote an autobiography with Stephen Smith, titled Spend, Spend, Spend which was dramatised for the BBC's Play for Today series by Jack Rosenthal. Spend, Spend, Spend was directed by John Goldschmidt and stars Susan Littler and John Duttine. Nicholson died at Pinderfields hospital, Wakefield, aged 79, on 11 April 2015, after having a stroke and suffering from dementia.
In culture
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". 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, she objected to her image being used for the single's cover due to the use of an expletive in the song's lyrics. A successful musical based on Nicholson's life – Spend Spend Spend – debuted in 1998 and subsequently ran on the West End.
