Spend, Spend, Spend is an episode of the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

's Play for Today

Play for Today

Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted...

anthology series first transmitted 15 March 1977Michael Brooke "Spend Spend Spend (1977)", BFI screenonline page on BBC1

BBC One

BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...

, recounting the life of football pools

Football pools

A football pool, often collectively referred to as "the pools", is a betting pool based on predicting the outcome of top-level association football matches set to take place in the coming week. The pools are typically cheap to enter, with the potential to win huge money. Entries were traditionally...

 winner Viv Nicholson

Viv Nicholson

Vivian Nicholson became publicly known overnight within Great Britain in 1961 when she received £152,319 in a football-pools win and announced to the press that she was going to "spend, spend, spend"...

.

Written by Jack Rosenthal

Jack Rosenthal

Jack Morris Rosenthal CBE was an English playwright, who wrote 129 early episodes of the ITV soap opera Coronation Street and over 150 screenplays, including original TV plays, feature films, and adaptations.-Biography:...

 it is based on the book of the same name by Nicholson and Stephen Smith and recounts Nicholson's life story from the 1950s to the early 1970s in a non-linear fashion.

Rosenthal was a colleague of the PR man who, on behalf of Littlewoods Pools, persuaded Nicholson to allow publicity for her pools win. He wrote in his autobiography: "From that day on, I followed her wild, seemingly stupid adventures in the papers - and believed every snide, snooty, biased word the relentless publicity said. All adding up to one word - that she was a cow." Being given Nicholson's book by director John Goldschmidt

John Goldschmidt

John Goldschmidt is a film director and producer. Goldschmidt was born in London, but grew up in Vienna leaving at the age of 16 to return to London. Goldschmidt has both Austrian and British nationality...

caused Rosenthal to reassess his attitude and "become a fan" eager to put across an explanation of her behaviour.

The production won the British Academy Best Play Award and Royal Television Society's Writer's Award 1977. A shortened version - running to 76 minutes - was screened by BBC Four in 2003. The work was released on DVD by Acorn media in 2011, alongside other works by Rosenthal broadcast by the BBC.

External links

• Spend Spend, Spend at the TV Cream website