Wales made and Britain says "Farewell" to the Grande Dame of Television Celebrity Interviewers, Mavis Nicholson

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Mavis, who has died at the age of ninety-two  from her middle years onwards forged a dazzling career in the male dominated world of TV  interviewers. She was born in the Autumn of 1930 in Briton Ferry, a town and community in the county borough

of Neath, at the industrial mouth of the River Neath near Port Talbot, South Wales. She was the first child of Olive and Dick Mainwaring who drove a crane in the Port Talbot Aberavon Steelworks and it was from him that Mavis inherited her lifelong Socialist convictions. 

Born, before her parents were married, she grew up in the family terraced house in Mansel Street which housed, in addition to her mother and father, two uncles and her grandmother and grandfather. Hers was a happy childhood, with love and affection, surrounded as she was, by this extended Welsh family that helped to forge the future Mavis and explains why she once said : “I’ll tell you what I did have, a great instinct about people”.  

She revealed this closeness of familial relationships when, reflecting on her early years and said : "My mother had twins six years after me and I was the apple of her eye till then and she never told me that she was having babies. I didn't know. And they came home, two babies and me spoilt, and suddenly I had to leave mother and father's bedroom, we were very overcrowded, and sleep in (her grandmother) Martha Jane's bed and I remember the first night I was in that bed, big bed, feather bed and Martha Jane said : "Move over. You've warmed that up nicely for me. You get into the cold bit" (link)

Mavis dreaded her friends finding out about the bed and continued to share it with Matha Jane for another thirteen years, until she left home at the age of eighteen to go to university. Nevertheless, the possessive, baleful and increasingly bitter old lady was a dominant figure in her life and Mavis immortalized her in her autobiographical book, 'Martha Jane and Me' which was published in 1991. 

Broadcaster and journalist Carolyn Hitt, met Mavis in 2016 when filming the BBC documentary, 'Being Mavis Nicholson : TV's Greatest Interviewer' and said "Bette Davis, Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, it didn't matter how major the celebrity and how many times they had played the interview game before, Mavis got something from them that no-else could. The alchemy of her interviews was part journalism, part psychotherapy plus the relentless curiosity which is perhaps peculiar to a certain kind of Welsh working-class upbringing. Anyone who, like Mavis, grew up in a household where strong women constantly chatted, gossiped and debated will recognise it".

Mavis later reflected : "My mother said to me around the time when I was on telly - she said : "Do you know what I said to you, but you were too young to hear me say it ? : "You've got something that makes people want to talk to you", because when you were outside in your pushchair and I was rushing into the butcher's, I'd come out and there was at least one person talking to you". She said I had the kind of face that people wanted to talk to and that she was never surprised that I was a good interviewer and became successful. When I was about ten she asked me what I wanted to be ? I said : "Maybe a teacher". My mother said : "You can be anything - even a film star". There's no doubt about it, she really gave me my confidence".

In 1940, at the start of the Second World War Mavis won a scholarship and gained a place at the Neath Grammar School for Girls and seen here, standing in third row, third from the left. The 1946 Jubilee edition of the School Magazine confidently asserted that : 'The school this year is represented by students at many universities' and went on to point out that although generally girls’ careers were teaching, clerical or nursing, the school had one engineer who had passed her Mechanical Sciences Tripos examination in 1942 and further, that no woman’s name had appeared on the Cambridge Engineering lists for 16 years. 

Outside school her childhood mentor was Eileen Sims, a classics graduate with a double first, who was a deacon at the local Jerusalem English Baptist Chapel, where at 14, Mavis was baptised with seven others in a tank of cold water. It was known locally during the war as “the conchies’ chapel” and might well have been attended by some of the 400 Baptist, conscientious objectors who refused to fight in the Second World War at this time. Some years later Mavis was true to her Baptist roots when, in 1981, she was, as a vocal opponent of nuclear proliferation and demonstrated with the other women at Greenham Common and in 2002, marched in London in protest against the war with Iraq. 

Mavis took her religion very seriously in her teenage years and said : 'I did have a real zeal for religion - I was up in pulpits preaching the brotherhood of man and praying with heart and soul for it - without losing my equally strong devotion to clothes and make-up, the cinema and boys'. She a special relationship with Miss Sims or 'Simsie', who gave her out of school lessons in Latin to ensure that she could enter the sixth form at school. In a remarkable early example of her curiosity and need to draw people out, she had once, on one of their slow walks to the chapel, asked Simsie if she'd ever been in love ? To which she replied : "Once. Don't ask me any more. It's a hopeless case. I have never told anyone and never will, because it is out of the question". Mavis persisted and said : "Does he know ?" to which Simsie replied : "Heavens girl, absolutely not and never, ever will. That's why, Miss M, you must not ask me anything more and please don't try to guess".

On leaving school in 1948, having gained a place at University College of Swansea to study Economic History, she later said : 'When I left home for college, though I didn't know it at the time, that day I left hone for good'. Before leaving she was full of foreboding and : 'The sickening terror I felt at the prospect of sharing a room with a girl called Mary Davies, a 'doctor's' daughter' who would find out that, at home, she didn't have a bathroom. Before she left she gave Sarah Jane a hug and said : "Grandma, you were like a mother to me when I was little. I'll never foreget that". She also wrote to Simsie, 'Dear Miss S, I know that God has been good, that He is the one way ... but Simsie, there's a heap of weakness in my heart and I need more heavenly guidance. I need a human prod which is what you are'. 

In 1949, now a second year student at the age of nineteen, at midnight on that New Year’s Eve in 1949 she met and started her affair with fellow student and future husband, Geoffrey Nicholson and recalled : "As the clock struck 12, Geoff walked towards me - poetic-looking, very thin, long hair, which no one had then, and in a red shirt which no one wore - said, "Happy New Year", and kissed me".

Geoff, who was a year older than her, was a first year student who had elected to do his two years national service as a lance-bombadier in the Royal Artillery, before studying English Literature at the university. Like her, Geoff, the son of a Saxone shoe shop salesman, came from a working class background and it was at the University that they both made the acquaintance of the young, the then, left-leaning, twenty-six year old English Literature lecturer, Kingsley Amis, he himself the son of a clerk for the mustard manufacturer Colman's in the City of London. 

In 1951, Mavis failed her final exams and ended up without a degree, but still managed to win a 'Edward Hulton Scholarship' to train with a small group of graduates as advertising copywriters in London. Geoff won his scholarship the following year and joined Mavis in London where they promptly got married. Mavis, in fact became one of Kingsley's many mistresses shortly after the marriage and agonised over the affair. Kingley's wife Hilly, who counted Mavis a friend, had known about it, but did not demur, partly because, as she later said : “She was never a threat, we were all in love with Mavis”. 

In London and in their twenties in the 1950s, the Nicholsons became the centre of a lively social circle, including included the actor Maureen Lipman and  journalist Valerie Grove and the Welsh journalist and broadcaster John Morgan who worked for BBC TV. The circle included included Kingsley, who after the publication of 'Lucky Jim' in 1954 was now, 'novelist', Kingsley Amis. According to Peter Corrigan, the Nicholsons :  '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'.

Kingsley would go on to dedicate his 1960 novel, 'Take a Girl Like You' to Mavis and Geoff. The story followed the progress of a twenty-year-old primary school teacher, a 'traditional' Northern working-class girl with a dusky beauty, who warded off the attempts to seduce her by a 30-year-old teacher at a local private secondary school. 

In fact, her friendship with Kingsley endured for 35 years and he invited her to accompany him when he won the Booker Prize for his 1986 novel 'The Old Devils' and she visited him in hospital to say "goodbye" a week before he died in 1995.

Mavis found work a journalist on women’s magazines, including the radically chic 'Nova' in the 1960s and then left her professional life to devote herself as the mother of her three sons and financially supported by Geoffrey who himself was a modest, unassuming man, to whom family mattered more than career but nevertheless became highly successful as one of a small team on the 'Observer' newspaper. It was there that he helped to transform the character of sports journalism in the late 1950s by introducing a quality of writing that matched, and was sometimes superior to, that on the arts and foreign pages.

Mavis's career as a television broadcaster began when, at the age of forty-one, in 1971, she was spotted when she appeared on Thames Television’s news magazine programme, 'Today', hosted by Eamonn Andrews. She was criticising a local council plan to bus the children of immigrants across London to a school attended by her sons. Eamonn told her : “You ought to be on television,” to which she replied : “I think I ought”. Shortly afterwards, the Thames Television executive, Jeremy Isaacs, asked her to come on air, provided she promised not to change and she was asked to host a programme, called 'Tea Break', on newly launched 'Daytime Television'. She did not conform to the popular image of a television presenter and his verdict was that she was : “Sharp, earthy, Welsh”.

In fact, Jeremy had already encountered Mavis on the dinner party circuit and was impressed with the way this "small charismatic Welsh woman" could engage those around her. Seeing how natural she was on the screen sealed the deal and her presence there became a break from the past with her 'Good Afternoon', because British television had previously only started to broadcast in the late afternoon. It was the start of a television career which would span the next 25 years. She worked on 'After Noon Plus' and 'Mavis on 4' through to the 1990s and it was during this time, that she interviewed a galaxy of celebrities.

1973 : Peter Finch : Fenner Brockway

1975 : Quentin Crisp   : Laurie Lee : Frank Muir  & part two : Denis Norden

1976 : Frankie Howerd

1977 : Rod Hull  : Barbara Cartland   : Beryl Bainbridge : Albert Finney  : John Mortimer

1977 : Arthur Marshall : J.G.Ballard : Norman Parkinson

1978 : Patricia Highsmith  : Shirley Williams : Antonia White 

1979 : David Bowie  : Lilli Palmer  : A.J.P. Taylor : Anthony Howard & Paregrine Worsthorne : Sir Arthur Bryant : Neil Kinnock

1981 : Stewart Granger : Tom Baker : Derek Jacobi : Rudolph Nureyev

1983 : Charlton Heston  : Dame Anna Neagle

1984 : Mel Brooks  : Hardy Amies  : Germaine Greer  : Steven Berkoff  : Roald Dahl

1983 : Daniel Day Lewis

1985 : Lauren Bacall

1986 : Sophia Loren

1987 : Bette Davis  : Sir Alec Guinness : Elizabeth Taylor

1989 : Kenny Everett : Elvis Costello

1991 : Kirk Douglas

Also : 

William Trevor : Nina Simone  : Helen Mirren  : V.S.Pritchett : James Baldwin                      : Lady Diana Mosley : R.D.Laing and part two  : April Ashley

Hers was a world dominated by male counterparts where she excelled by dint of her quick wit and ability to really 'listen' to what her subjects were saying to her. When asked : 'What was her favourite interview ?' she said : "Margaret Thatcher, so I could have a good go at her. We got on like two houses on fire. She'd obviously checked on me. She knew my politics were not remotely like hers. That was a battle, a terrific battle that was". When questioned about her skill as an interviewer she said : "Mostly I've always found that people do like people being interested in them and I can genuinely say I'm interested in people. It's not a put on job at all". 

When she reflected on her interview with Rose Kennedy, the mother of American President John F Kennedy she said : "She was very startling, but that was a terrifying evening to start with because she came in and said : "I don't want any fuss. I don't want to know any questions. I've been asked all the questions in the world". And she came into the studio and said : "I don't want to be made-up. I've got enough make-up". So she sat down and said : "What do you think I look like ?" I said : "Well, you've got a blob of marmalade on your skirt". I said : "Let's get that off. And so we got that off and she said : "Anything else Madam ?" So I said : "You've got a snag in your stocking". And I said : "If you could just put your foot behind, you won't see it". "Anything else Madam ?" So I said : "I don't think your little cardy suits your dress". So I went over to this little cardy. I took it off. Now inside that cardy was her name before she got married. It was her school cardy. Her comfort blanket. She said : "If you say so Madam, I will take it off. I'm gonna do a darn good interview for you". I think she thought I had courage enough to tell her those three things, it really did get us going". (link)

In 2015 when Andrew Billing was reviewing the Gold TV Series, 'The Interviews' in 'The Times' he said : 'It's first subject is Kenneth Williams, a comedian for whom, as it points out, the chat show became his main means of artistic expression.' Jumping on his remark that “we all choose façades”, Mavis Nicholson, on her Thames TV afternoon show in 1976, asked what his façade protected and was rewarded with the insight “a deep inferiority complex”. His diaries, he admitted, contained detailed contemplations of suicide. He died of a barbiturate overdose in 1988'.(link)

In 1974 Mavis interviewed the comic duo, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore and Andrew wrote : 'Frequently in drink too, was Cook, a brilliant satirist who found his career becalmed after Moore, his partner, won Hollywood stardom. Again Nicholson, in 1974, asked the key question: why did he drink? Boredom, he replied. Sitting beside him, Moore, perhaps embolden by the artificiality of the conversation, demanded to know why he allowed it to hammer his concentration when they performed on stage. The pair never toured together again'. (link

Maya Angelou, the eminent writer and poet, who had also won  international acclaim as an actress, filmmaker, ambassador and civil-rights activist was interviewed by Mavis in 1984. As a result of their meeting Maya said that she was struck by "Our oneness, our similarities; that we're born continents, oceans and races apart, means very little. She's short, I'm tall. She's white, I'm black. She's Welsh, I'm American ...but we have so much. We simply, immediately almost, knew the other. I like her a lot because she doesn't laugh at other people : she laughs at herself. I like that she's tough, tough as an old walnut - a black walnut. And she's tender as a grape. That's how I want to be. She can't bear pretension, she would laugh it out of existence if she could". (link)

Mavis herself said : "I thought what a privilege it was going to be to meet this woman, to be given half an hour of airtime with her. I was alarmed by her talent, but there was something about her writing and her feelings that I felt I shared, so I felt we would get on. I remember, very vividly, feeling somewhere along the line that she was a sister".

In 2018 when Mavis was given the BAFTA Cymru Special Award for her 'Outstanding Contribution to Television', in St David's Hall in Cardiff she said : "I was absolutely flabbergasted. Then I thought 'be confident girl' and say "how wonderful it's about time"".

Maya Angelou said of Mavis  : 

"Mavis's greatest quality is to be herself, but she represents human beings. Some people are still themselves, but they only represent their class, their age group, their particular level of education. But she represents something very human, something that does not deny anybody entrance, and I think that's her greatest achievement".

Mavis said of herself : 

"What effect I really had, I can't tell you. I just loved interviewing people and I wasn't particularly greedy about my career".