Just before you enter that online raffle for a vast new Omaze house, it's worth considering that there's nothing new under the sun.
Down the decades, plenty of schemes have offered people the chance of a huge, instant win, from bingo (‘house!’) and the Football Pools (‘spend, spend, spend!’) to the National Lottery (‘it could be you!’) or WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONIARE? (‘final answer?’). But such things can turn out to be a poisoned chalice, and if anyone learned that the hard way, it was Vivian Asprey – aka Viv Nicholson.
She was born in the West Yorkshire town of Castleford, eight miles from Wakefield, on 3 April 1936. By trade, her father was a coal miner, but he was often unable to work due to epilepsy. He was also an alcoholic with a savage temper, of which young Viv was often on the receiving end. By the age of 12, she was picking loose pieces of coal from the ground to sell, and at 14 she left school to start work at the liquorice factory in nearby Pontefract. At 16, she married one Matthew Johnson, with whom she then had a son, but just two years later she left Johnson and married her younger neighbour Keith Nicholson. Even her early years, then, were tumultuous.
By the time she was 25, Viv had become a mother of four. The family was living in a council house at 235 Kershaw Avenue, Castleton on Saturday 30th September 1961 when Keith realised he’d predicted eight First Division football matches in a Littlewoods Triple Chance game that had resulted in score draws. That’s to say, he’d won the Pools, to the tune of £152,300, 18 shillings and eight pence. “Back then, even the eight pence meant something,” Viv later reminisced.
Tales are legion as to just how hard up the Nicholsons had been – Keith had borrowed money to buy the lucky pools coupon; Viv borrowed a pair of tights to wear at the presentation of the Littlewoods cheque. Suddenly, though, their entire lives were transformed. Viv stayed true to her promise and spent, spent, spent – on fancy cars, clothes, horse racing, foreign holidays and trust funds for her children, who were duly dispatched to private boarding schools. She and Keith relocated to ‘Ponderosa’, a ranch-style bungalow home with its own swimming pool in the upmarket neighbourhood of Garforth.
Within four years, the Nicholsons’ winnings were dwindling fast and the taxman was starting to circle. On 30 October 1965, Keith was driving his Jaguar on the A1 Aberford Bypass to Wetherby to buy some ponies when he lost control of the car, crashed and was killed. He was just 27.
This left Viv, still in her 20s, widowed and broke. Keith had left no will, and Viv struggled for three years to be awarded a £34,000 portion of her husband’s estate. Before long, though, that too had been spent. Speaking to The Observer in 2003, Viv was scathing about the company that had changed her life: “’Littlewoods never gave us any help,” she said. “They sent Keith and me out to the wild blue yonder. People like me would win the pools without having any idea how to handle it.” In point of fact, Littlewoods had founded a Winners Advisory Service in 1957 for this very purpose. Supposedly this service visited Viv on 19 separate occasions, but these visits didn’t come until after Keith’s death.
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Pools winner Vivienne Nicholson and husband Keith Howard Nicholson receive a cheque for £152,319 from television personality Bruce Forsyth after their win - credit MirrorPix
In truth, Viv’s story could have been very different. Famously, Littlewoods Pools coupons featured a ‘no publicity’ box, to be ticked by those who wished to keep their windfalls private. Viv claimed that Keith had indeed ticked the box, but somehow this was overlooked and the Nicholsons’ real-life tribulations became tabloid fodder. Undeniably, though, Viv may have have enjoyed, even welcomed, her fame.
After Keith, Viv married three more times, each union proving to be brief and somewhat tragic (one husband subjected her to domestic abuse, one died of a drug overdose and the third, astonishingly, was killed in another car crash). When asked years later why she’d married so many men, Viv replied, “Because I had nothing to do and they asked me”.
Perhaps, though, the statistics alone – pounds spent, husbands lost – fail to tell the full story of Viv Nicholson. Regardless of whether that ‘no publicity’ box was ticked or not, she became a celebrity: an icon, even, For as many people who belittled her for the choices she’d made, just as many applauded Viv for doing what so many of us only dream of doing: blowing a small fortune, just because she could.
Looking to start a new chapter in her life, in 1970 Viv moved to Malta, only to be deported back to the UK having supposedly punched a policeman. Back home in Yorkshire, stony broke, she attempted to commit suicide and received psychiatric treatment. During the mid 70s she found herself doing a turn at a Manchester strip club, singing the Shirley Bassey hit ‘Big Spender’ from the musical SWEET CHARITY (a song she loathed), but pointedly refusing to strip as she did so, which led to her being sacked. By this point, she was drinking heavily.
Things were looking bleak, but one option was for Viv to embrace her celebrity. In a bid to have her own hit record, she recorded two singles (‘Don’t Cry’ in 1973 and – inevitably – ‘Spend Spend Spend’ in 1979), though neither made any kind of impact on the charts. Her ‘spend, spend, spend!’ catchphrase also provided the title for her 1977 autobiography, published by Jonathan Cape and co-written with Stephen Smith, who had encountered Viv while researching ‘the effects of large changes of income on people’s lives’ at the University of London. The book swiftly became the basis of an acclaimed 1977 BBC PLAY FOR TODAY of the same name, starring Susan Littler as Viv. It was written by Jack Rosenthal, who later observed in his memoir that he’d followed Viv’s earlier exploits in the press and concluded that “she was a cow”. Upon reading her autobiography, though, Rosenthal “saw why she behaved the way she did. I did a complete U-turn. I became a fan.”
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Keith and Viviene Nicholson who won 152000 on the Pools 1961 Viv Nicholson - credit MirrorPix
All of this activity had a transformative effect on Viv’s story. The book’s success brought her fresh income, and by the end of the 70s she’d addressed her alcoholism and found new purpose as a Jehovah’s Witness. It also brought her to the attention of a new generation who were fascinated by her story and regarded her as an icon. In 1979 she inspired a track, inevitably titled ‘Spend Spend Spend’, on the debut album by feminist punk group The Slits, She also caught the attention of The Smiths’ lead singer Morrissey, who featured vintage photographs of her on the covers of no less than three of the band’s singles (‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’ in 1984; a German / Italian release of ‘Barbarism Begins at Home’ in 1985; and the withdrawn ‘Headmaster Ritual’ CD single in 1988).
For a time, Viv and Morrissey actually became friends – indeed, she even (jokingly) suggested that he become her next husband. When THE SOUTH BANK SHOW covered The Smiths in October 1987, the resulting documentary featured footage of the pair driving in an open-top Cadillac, with Viv discussing her lost riches and celebrating her life as a Jehovah’s Witness. This in turn all helped to raise Viv’s profile, at a time when she was largely single and devoting time to short-lived businesses such as running a boutique and selling antiques.
It was during the mid-1990s that Viv was contacted by Steve Brown and Justin Greene with a view to turning her story into a stage musical. SPEND SPEND SPEND premiered at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 1998, directed by Greene, with Rosie Ashe playing Viv and Sophie-Louise Dann playing Young Viv. Choreographed by Craig Revel Horwood (later to find fame as a judge on STRICTLY COME DANCING), the show opened in the West End the following year, enjoying a successful run at the Piccadilly Theatre, now starring Barbara Dickson as Viv and Rachel Leskovac as her younger incarnation. At that point Viv herself was working in a Wakefield pharmacy, but the show’s success filled her coffers once again, reportedly with around £100,000.
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Viv Nicholson - credit Mirrorpix
In 2009, then in her 70s, Viv suffered a stroke which brought with it the slow onset of dementia. She became a resident at the Breadalbane care home in Castleford, where she was still capable of enraging the management by drying her lingerie on the washing line and shinning down drainpipes to make unauthorised trips to the shops.
Viv Nicholson died in Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield on 11 April 2015, at the age of 79, leaving less than £2000 in her will. She was said to have become a flinty, somewhat isolated figure who was nevertheless capable of great generosity and good humour.
In her time she’d gone from rags to riches and back to rags again, and for doing so she’d been made an example of, sneeringly. by the press. But she had, to put it mildly, been deprived of the finer things in life at times, and it’s hard to judge her for wanting to luxuriate in them when she had them.
Speaking to the BBC back in 1998, as the stage musical neared production, carrying with it the prospect of another windfall, Viv resolved: “If there’s one thing I’m not going to do, I’m not going to spend, spend, spend.”
(SPOILER: she did.)
