Viv Nicholson and PLENTY (currency)

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 on 30 October 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.

She made many attempts to regain both her public profile and her lost wealth, such as recording a single (entitled "Spend Spend Spend", written by her brother) and appearing in a strip club singing "Big Spender". None of these efforts proved successful.

After opening a short-lived boutique, she ended up penniless and, by 1976, claimed that she could not even afford to bury her fourth husband, who had died (and with whom she had broken up three years earlier).

In 1976, Nicholson co-wrote an autobiography with Stephen Smith, entitled Spend, Spend, Spend. It was later dramatised as the BBC Play for Today production Spend, Spend, Spend in 1977. The adaptation was written by Jack Rosenthal and directed by John Goldschmidt (who won a BAFTA award for the filmed play) and starred Susan Littler and John Duttine.

A successful musical based on Nicholson's life – Spend Spend Spend – debuted in 1998 and subsequently ran in London's West End. A photograph of Nicholson also appeared on the cover of The Smiths' single "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" and "Barbarism Begins At Home".

PLENTY (currency) and Viv Nicholson

PLENTY are offered in 50, 20, 10, 5 and 1 denomination bills and feature the phrase "In Each Other We Trust". The logo and currency were designed by artist Emma Skurnick and feature illustrations of native plants and animals. Bills are printed locally on bamboo based paper and include anti-counterfeiting features.

Like other local currencies, the PLENTY is legal as they don't too closely resemble United States currency. Transactions conducted with Plenties are taxed just as transactions in United States Dollars.

Contents 1 History 2 See also 3 References 4 External links

History

Local currency was commonly used during the Great Depression to keep commerce flowing locally when United States Dollars were scarce. The PLENTY was created by Annissa Clarke in Carrboro in 2002. The goal of the relaunch of the currency in 2009 was to encourage local spending. The relaunch was inspired in part by the book, Small is Possible: Life in a Local Economy, which was written by Lyle Estill. In a chapter entitled "Financing Ourselves," Estill introduces Capital Bank as a locally owned institution, and recounts his version of the PLENTY. The book attracted the attention of BJ Lawson who was running for congress, and interested in monetary theory, and who now serves as the chairman of the PLENTY board. See also BerkShares, a local currency in the Berkshires area of Massachusetts. List of community currencies in the United States
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