Vivian Nicholson (born 3 April 1936) became publicly known overnight within Great Britain in 1961 when she received £152,319 (equivalent to more than £3 million in 2009 adjusted for inflation) in a football-pools win and announced to the press that she was going to "spend, spend, spend". Nicholson became the subject of tabloid news-stories for some years.
By her own admission she found it hard to cope with the psychological effects of the money she 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 in 1965, her fortune rapidly dwindled to nothing: banks and tax creditors both deemed her bankrupt and declared that all her 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,but rapidly lost it all through some bad investments. After relocating to Malta, she was rapidly deported back to Britain amid a storm of tabloid publicity after assaulting a policeman, and was admitted to a mental home to escape from her third husband, who brutally 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", but none were 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, who had died (and with whom she had broken up three years earlier).
In 1976 Nicholson co-wrote an autobiography with Stephen Smith, titled Spend, Spend, Spend. It was later dramatised as a BBC Play for Today production Spend, Spend, Spend in 1977. The adaptation was written by Jack Rosenthal and directed by John Goldschmidt (who won a BAFTA award for the filmed play) and starred Susan Littler and John Duttine.
A successful musical based on her life - Spend Spend Spend - debuted in 1998 and subsequently ran in London's West End. A photograph of Nicholson also appeared on the cover of The Smiths' single "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" and "Barbarism Begins At Home".