Vivian "Viv" Nicholson (nee Asprey; 3 April 1936 – 11 April 2015) was a British woman who became famous when she told the media that 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 because of the couple'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 Wakefield. Her father was a coal miner, but suffered from epilepsy, and was often unable to work. Her mother was asthmatic. As the oldest child, Asprey was expected to mind her younger brothers and sisters and scavenge for coal. Growing up in extreme poverty, she was not allowed to take up a scholarship that she had won to an 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 Nicholson won the football pools on 30 September 1961. His and his wife's lavish spending sprees (including purchases of expensive sportscars, fur coats, clothing, home appliances, jewellery and holiday trips) over the next few years quickly depleted their fortune. By her own admission, Viv faced difficulty in coping with the psychological effects of the money that Keith had won. Having no concept of how to manage and save money, she admitted that her spending was akin to a narcotics addiction. She came to feel distanced from the people among whom she had lived, who in turn could no longer relate to her, and she developed an ever greater longing for a much more affluent lifestyle. After Keith died in a car accident, Viv's fortune rapidly dwindled to nothing; banks and tax creditors deemed her bankrupt and declared that all the money, and everything that 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 by more uncontrolled spending, as well as by taxes, legal fees, unpaid bills and bad investments. Difficulties In 1970, Nicholson relocated to Malta, but the following year, after she was arrested for