Barbara speaks to the 'This is Hampshire' website about touring with "Spend Spend Spend" (July 2001)
HEY BIG SPENDER
Barbara Dickson says her life is weird and wonderful and a bit of a juggling act. Nadine Bateman talks to the singer who is starring in Spend, Spend, Spend at The Mayflower...
Money can't buy you love, sang The Beatles, neither can it bring you happiness, and if there's one person who is living proof of that cliché it's pools winner Viv Nicholson.
She and her husband Keith won the jackpot in 1961 and joyously vowed to `Spend, Spend, Spend'.
Before that they had lived a life of abject poverty, raising their young family on £7 a week. From having only two dresses - one for work and one for `best' - Viv suddenly found herself with enough cash to buy several shops full - £150,000 - that's nearly £3million in today's money. She went wild, living a Champagne lifestyle, which included buying huge houses and numerous cars, including a Rolls Royce, fur coats and holidays abroad, until eventually she ended up penniless and right back where she started.
Along the way, despite being generous, she faced jealousy and hostility from friends, neighbours and colleagues, she also had to cope with the death of Keith and she married a total of five times.
Viv Nicholson's gripping story is the subject of a musical at The Mayflower this month called , appropriately, Spend, Spend, Spend, which stars Barbara Dickson.
"It's such a moving show, so real, that's what's marvellous about it," says Barbara.
"Unusually for a musical it's the story of somebody who is still alive. If she hadn't been it would have been so easy to glamorise her, but that hasn't been done. She is somebody who has suffered a lot and that comes across."
Barbara is one of two actresses in the role of Viv Nicholson. She plays her later in life and the younger Viv is played Rachel Leskovac.
"Rachel and I both find that playing Viv requires massive amounts of soul, love and humour. And, as actors, we have to lay it on with a trowel, especially as we have to encapsulate a very full life in just two hours!"
Barbara and Rachel sing a moving song called Who's Gonna Love Me Now You're Gone, which is about Keith who tragically died after crashing one of the cars bought with the couple's winnings.
"There is a line in that song that is sung by my co-star, Rachel, which goes `I search for traces of you on the pillow, the smell of you, an eyelash, or a hair'.
"When I heard that I cried," admits Barbara.
"You can imagine if it was your husband or your lover who had been snuffed out, you would search the bed for something of him, wouldn't you?
"I know it's sexist but I had to ask the writer of the song, Steve Brown, how a man could possibly write those lyrics, especially those two lines, because they seem to me more the kind of thing a woman would think. He told me he got them from Viv, that she has written them in her book."
Barbara draws comparisons with Spend, Spend, Spend and another show in which she played the lead Blood Brothers, for which she was given the Society of West End Theatre's Award for Best Actress in a Musical.
"Both musicals have great emotional depth - they make people laugh and cry. The audience doesn't come out of the theatre and go `Right, okay let's have a drink'. There is that moment of silence when the shows finishes that leaves a lasting effect on you."
Barbara Dickson is probably best remembered for the video in which she sang the housewive's anthem I Know Him So Well, a duet with Elaine Paige.
"That was from Chess, but I never actually appeared in the musical I just sang the song!"
Born and brought up in Dunfermline, Fife she started singing in folk clubs at the age of 17 and then appeared in Willy Russell's musical John, Paul George, Ringo . . . and Bert, in Liverpool and the West End, during the seventies.
In the 1980s Barbara Dickson achieved chart success with the melodic tunes January, February and Caravan, appearing on Top of the Pops playing the piano and sporting an unruly mop of curly, hippy-chick hair.
These days her style is more sophisticated, with her sleek blonde hair and understated wardrobe she looks every inch the successful, mature actress and singer who has tackled a variety of roles including a spell as a prostitute in the television drama Band of Gold.
But she still thinks of herself as a singer.
That's my main work. I have only ever really done a couple of musicals before and Spend, Spend, Spend is the first time anything has taken me away from home for a long period of time.
Home is in Lincolnshire with husband, Oliver Cookson, who she married in 1984, he is a first assistant director working on programmes such as EastEnders, The Bill and Where the Heart Is. They have three sons Colm, aged 14, Gabriel, 12, and Archie who is 10 years old.
"They're like big puppies," says Barbara
"They say things like `can we have a snuggle?' and I love it.
"My eldest is at senior boarding school in Yorkshire and my little ones are at a local boarding school during the week and come home for the weekend. So, if I am away which I was last year, I stay at a flat in London during the week and go home at the weekends or they all come to London.
"But, as any working mother will know the logistics can be very difficult - it's a juggling act and mostly you manage to keep all the balls in the air, but sometimes they come crashing down," she confesses.
"I was performing a couple of years ago when Gabriel got appendicitis which turned into peritonitis. Luckily I just happened to be working in Lincoln, which is about 30 miles from where I live. When I came home at 11.30 at night I found my child sitting up in bed and saying `mummy I've got such a sore tummy', and I realised he'd had it for two days, so I rang the doctor and Gabriel was in hospital by two o'clock in the morning.
"I stayed there with him and as I watched his little blonde head on the trolley going through to operating theatre I just slid down the wall and cried my eyes out because I was so worried and frightened. Up until then none of my children had ever had any major health problems and Gabriel's condition was acute. It was really very scary. I was totally in shreds. I was off work for about two weeks and they just had to find somebody else."
Barbara says it was slightly easier when the children were younger and she could take them on tour, but that it became more difficult when they started school.
"Somehow we've worked round it, and the lovely thing about this weird and wonderful life I have with my family is that it's nothing like anybody else's routine, therefore we have this fantastic bond and closeness. Because we don't see each other every day, when we do it's really special. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder and that certainly works for us, but that's not to say that I wouldn't be glad to see my kids every day
"The main reason my husband Oliver and I decided to send our eldest to boarding school was because he is very dyslexic and he was in a class of 30, now he is in a class of six and doing so well that he no longer even thinks of himself as dyslexic - his confidence has soared."
Barbara's youngest son, Archie, also suffers from severe dyslexia.
"My middle child is fine, but he will attend the same fantastic school as the other two because, as any mum will know, you can't give to one without giving to the other."
Barbara acknowledges she is lucky to be in a position to pay for her children's education.
"There were just no resources for dyslexics in the state schools in our area and I really feel for other parents who cannot do what we have done."
If Barbara's life sounds like sounds like a charmed one now, that wasn't always the case.
"My life has been nothing like Viv's, thank goodness. Although I come from a very ordinary background in Scotland, a mining area, and we were very hard up, I have never experienced the grinding poverty that Viv did in her early life and like my mum did.
Barbara says she couldn't imagine herself being reckless with money or any winnings, in any case she has only ever bought a lottery ticket once and says she wouldn't do it again. But her mum gets one every week.
"I thing it's a mugs game, but mum says somebody's got to win it. The lovely thing is that I know if she did she'd give half to me and the rest to my brother, that's what my mum's like. She's very old fashioned, housewife type mother - very loving and supportive."
Barbara says she is not really motivated by money but feels grateful for what she has and loves what she does for a living
"I don't want to sound smug, but I've done very well, I've got a good career, three fantastic children and I love my husband - I'm not bothered about anything else, as long as we all have our health.
"If I got to the age of 85 and earned not a penny more I'd be still be grateful. Things like the pools and the lottery are unimportant to me, in fact, I feel that it wouldn't help my life. There's a Faustian pact involved in having lots of money as you see in Spend, Spend, Spend. I know it's true.
