Mavis Nicholson

There she and her husband were at the centre of a lively social circle, including the journalist and broadcaster John Morgan and the novelist Kingsley Amis. According to Peter Corrigan's obituary of her husband, Mavis and Geoff Nicholson " became a much-loved double-act. Amis did not always approve of their views and claimed to have invented the word "lefties" during one little set-to with them. While it was true that the Nicholsons didn't have dinner parties as such - they invited people for an argument and threw some food in - they were by no means belligerent but had in abundance the Welsh love of debate."

Nicholson stopped her work as an advertising copywriter when she had her children, but her second career as a broadcaster began when, because of her probing and engaging conversational style at the dinner table, she was asked to host a programme on newly-launched daytime television (British television had previously only started to broadcast in the late afternoon). Read Less