Three words that spawned a fable

Spends Spend Spend, Lowry, Salford

IT is odd to reflect that the industrial-strength cautionary tale that has grown around Viv Nicholson might never have happened, if not for the three idiotic words about her plans for her new-found fortune from the football pools.

Those words are now the title of the musical version of the play of the biography of the selfish life that followed after she and second husband Keith won £152,000 in 1961.

While it doesn’t sound like much, today it would be worth about £5million - which is.

Famously, she and Keith went on to waste most of the money, and failed to invest or protect their family’s future. After Keith’s death in a car crash, she continued spending what was left and ended up back in her native Castleford, broke.

The entire point of this musical version of the life comes right at the end, when Viv considers - perhaps one of the few times in her life when she used her head — that she was happiest in their first home, before they won the money, young and in love. It took her decades to realise it, but she had fun along the way.

There are times in Steve Brown and Justin Greene’s show when it seems we are being asked to sympathise with the woman who had, and lost, almost everything she could want.

No way. Despite a hard Yorkshire upbringing shared with thousands of other, Nicholson brought almost all her troubles on herself.

This makes some of the songs a little self-pitying and pathetic. We also find out more than we need about her youthful life: the show spends about 10 minutes on her first husband, a fairly inconsequential character, then wastes more time on a long, jocular and indulgent song about the hard life of the collier.

Despite that, this Watermill Theatre production is a brilliant confection of conceit and stagecraft.

Kirsty Hoiles is terrific as the young Viv, Karen Mann equally so as the reflective older version, while Greg Barnett is an excellent foil as Keith.

As for other Watermill shows, MD Sarah Travis does an amazing job of passing instruments among the ensemble cast, so the actors are also the band. Strictly Come Dancing’s Craig Revel Harwood proves himself a strong director and choreographer of what is a fast-moving, tireless evening that rarely flags, despite the over-egged material.