Viv Nicholson

Who is Viv Nicholson?

Vivian Nicholson became publicly known overnight within Great Britain in 1961 when her husband Keith received £152,319 in a football pools win, and she announced to the press that she was going to "spend, spend, spend". Nicholson became the subject of tabloid news stories for 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 in 1965, 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, 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. She entered 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.