Victory Is My Name

By Nicola Morrison

Nicola Morrison is an editor and former BBC broadcast journalist, with a compelling and empowering life story to tell. Some of her greatest achievements include scaling the lofty heights of one of the largest news corporations in the world and reporting on some of the biggest breaking news stories of the century. But her biggest accomplishment to date is a personal one – overcoming life’s many challenges and living to tell the tale. From domestic abuse to suicide to the harrowing murder of a beloved relative, Nicola has survived it all. Victory Is My Name, is a story of setbacks and triumph, hardship and victory, challenges and hope.

As an optimistic, confident, voice of reason to her peers, Nicola is convinced that many will be surprised to learn of her eventful life experiences and to uncover her deepest insecurities that plagued much of her young and early adult years. She hopes that by bravely sharing her story, it will empower and inspire others to know that they are wonderfully and fearfully made, and that if she can do it, so can you!

“I’m not a victim, I am victorious!” – Nicola Morrison

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Apr 26, 2024
• ISBN: 9781035830268

Nicola Morrison

Nicola Morrison is an editor and former BBC reporter. Growing up from humble beginnings, Nicola has experienced many highs and lows in her personal and professional life. Her story is a powerful one, ranging from racism and abuse to suicide and even murder—to faith, success and TV stardom—and almost everything you can imagine in-between! Victory Is My Name is a compelling and empowering account of triumph and overcoming against all odds. “I’m not a victim,” Nicola says, “I’m victorious!”

Book preview

Dedication

This book is dedicated to ‘Charni-bear’, Eric and Alison.

And to all those who didn’t get to finish their story.

Copyright Information ©

Nicola Morrison 2024

The right of Nicola Morrison to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of the author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author. Some of the names have been changed to protect identities of the people.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035830251 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035830268 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

I want to thank all those who made writing this book possible, my amazing and supportive family and friends, but especially my beloved mum and irreplaceable sister. I wouldn’t trade you guys for silver or gold! Thank you for your vulnerability, your trust and your selflessness. Thank you for supporting my vision and for allowing me to tell my story without limit or condition, and for loving me unconditionally throughout the process.

I also want to thank the amazing angels without wings that I have encountered on earth along my journey who have made the woman writing this book feel cherished, supported, and capable. The amazing Marky, if I rewrote my life story a thousand times, you would always be in it. Once a formidable trio, now a dynamic pair, I know Charni is still cheering us on, and whenever we are together, I feel her presence most. Thank you for being the true definition of a loyal and trusted friend.

Thank you to Jan, one of the most solid, supportive people I have ever known. You ground me, you motivate me, and you never cease to know just what I need at any given time.

Thank you to Unc and my amazing cousin, two amazing, dependable men in my life who have always stood in the gap for me and held space and made me feel loved, seen and affirmed. I can’t begin to count the ways that you and your amazing wives have supported me over the years for which I will be eternally grateful.

A humble thank you to all those who have touched my life that aren’t here anymore, who nurtured and shaped the woman that I am today. I’m grateful that our life stories intertwined, albeit too briefly.

Thank you to the many mentors and professional motivators who took a punt and gave me a chance. To David R, Simon, Katie, Judy, Toby and Morwen, thank you for believing in me, for creating opportunities, and for holding the door open for me. You will never know how much it meant to me and continues to mean.

I love you all.

NICOLA

Latinised version of the Greek name Nikolaos; ‘Niko’ means victory and ‘laos’ means people: ‘Victory of the people’.

Attributes of her name:

She is confident and independent.

She has great strength of character,

And is much admired for this.

She is generous to her friends,

And loves her family dearly.

She is patient, considerate and practical.

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

– Maya Angelou

1

Humble Beginnings

Born on 25 September 1983, in a South London hospital, I’m told I came into the world peacefully and fast. The labour was straightforward, natural, and not too painful (Mum’s words not mine). And within 30 minutes of pushing, I was here.

My first official baby photo was taken just hours after I was brought home from the hospital. I’m propped up in a vibrant, burnt orange, knitted sofa in my grandparents’ 60s-style living room, looking straight at the camera, holding up my two middle fingers. My mum would later insist that this involuntary pose was a result of me trying to find my mouth with my fingers, which on reflection has some merit, as I would go on to suck said two fingers until the age of nine.

However, I prefer the more humorous narrative that I was displaying to the camera an early indication of the rebellious, non-conformist spirit I possessed within, that was just bursting to come out, that has been ever-present even since the tender age of just one-day-old.

As a baby, I was described as long-limbed and fair. My fair skin would be something that would become a point of conversation for decades to come. Growing up, people would frequently compare my lighter complexion to that of my chocolate-brown siblings, sometimes with a positive inflection, despite the colourist undertones.

Other times, my skin tone yielded more overtly negative comments, masked in jest, which either implied I had been secretly adopted without my knowledge or that my mum had deceptively conceived me with the (assumed White) milkman. Either way, I learnt early on that my skin was different and therefore, that meant I was different.

By all accounts, I was a happy baby. I ate well—fruit, veg, sweet, savoury, you name it, I turned down nothing. I was quick to talk too. At 18 months, I astounded guests at a wedding reception when I announced to the entire room, after my mum had discreetly checked my training pants for any potential leaks, that, Mummy tickled my bum bum! causing everyone in the room to fall about in fits of laughter.

I’m told I quite literally slept like a baby, throughout the night and day for hours on end from an early age, which for a mother of two under three, was light relief after two years of virtually no sleep with my older brother. My mum would often retell the story of the time I slept for 14 hours straight and describe how she had been so nervous during my record-breaking ‘sleep marathon’, that she would intermittently tiptoe over to my crib and peek in, occasionally placing her hand under my nose to make sure that I was still breathing.

As a toddler, I had long, gangly legs, big brown eyes and fine golden-brown curls which lay unceremoniously flat to my head. From a distance, you could be forgiven for thinking my mane was non-existent, but on closer inspection, you would have to appreciate my subtle yet evident blonde fuzz, which lightly adorned my head, for many of my early years.

It took me a little longer than some to grow a full set of teeth too and for a while, my toothy smile consisted of just two baby teeth on the top row of my mouth and two on the bottom. It wasn’t long before the nickname Gum-Gum was ascribed to me and thanks to my dad, infamously followed me into my adolescence.

Over the years, I was given many nicknames by family members and friends: Chookie-egg (on account of my thinly covered egg-like crown), Nitala, Atta, Nic-ca-ca, Nic-Nic, Nikki, Nics and Nic Nacs.

It was my dad who gave me my christened name. My mum actually wanted to name me Nicole, although ironically as fate would have it, I probably get called Nicole just about as much as I do Nicola. It’s as if the ‘la’ is just one syllable too much for people to endure, and so they call me Nicole and seemingly assure themselves that it is near enough in the ballpark. I am certain there are millions of Marias being called Marie or Sophias being called Sophie out there, and to them, I truly sympathise with your plight.

Although I was born in South London, I have no recollection of it, as we moved back to Mum and Dad’s hometown in North West London by the time I was two years old. Mum felt cut off from everything she knew and desperately wanted to move back to be closer to her family and friends. Dad, less fazed by the prospect of being estranged from loved ones, eventually came around to the idea and agreed to move back to more familiar surroundings.

Mum made her closest brother in age my godfather, on account of his constant protection and adoration for me. With no kids of his own, Unc cherished me as his own. Family members over the years would recite how he used to scoop me up and run out of the room whenever I was in the process of being told off or when anyone would attempt to forcibly remove my fingers from my mouth. Years later, I asked Mum if maybe his devotion to me was because I reminded him so much of her at that age.

Perhaps, my reprimands caused him to reminisce about her defiantly sucking her identical two fingers in the presence of disapproving, tutting elders and witnessing it for a second time had transported him back in time; this time swooping in and coming to my rescue! Whatever the reason, there was an undeniable bond between Unc and I, and it was plain for all to see.

One of my earliest memories as a child was when I was around four years old and we lived in a three-bed, top-floor flat, in a new development in Wembley, called Elliot Close. It was just the three of us, me, Mum and Sean, my older brother. Sean is only two years older than me, although, in the early years, he looked after me as if there were ten years between us. He would often refer to me in social settings as his ‘little sister’ and took great pride in the duty of looking after me—a self-appointed responsibility he took seriously and assumed virtually as soon as he could walk.

When he was just two and a half years old, to my mum’s horror, he carried me out of my crib and into the living room to greet her, announcing as he entered the living room, The baby woke up. Horrified, my mum leapt out of her seat to retrieve me from his tiny, loving grip.

We lived at Elliot Close only for a couple of years—the best years. I loved everything about it there. It had a nice family community, with lots of kids for me and Sean to play with. The friendly cul-de-sac felt safe, and the estate, lined with greenery and grassland, made it an ideal place for outdoor adventure. Sean and I and the kids from the neighbourhood would spend hours playing out, using fallen down trees as climbing frames, playing hide and seek in-between the alleyways of the blocks, and chasing one another out into the rolling fields behind the buildings which seemed to go on for miles.

Playing out was the best pastime of all, and at that time in the mid-80s, it felt safe to leave your doors unlocked, or as we did, on the latch and venture out, unattended. Escapades back then only came with two parental caveats—not to go off the estate and not to take sweets from strangers. I personally added a third rule to the list, which bizarrely involved covering my eyes whenever I saw a large black bird.

This was in response to an account I had heard from one of the neighbourhood kids that a woman had her eyes plucked out by a crow. In hindsight, with life experience on my side and my journalistic Spidey senses twitching, I concede that five-year-old me probably could have benefitted from a more in-depth exploration of the fundamental facts of that story, or perhaps should’ve just run it by an adult.

But at the time, that horrifying information was enough for me to abandon my all-encompassing love for animals and adopt the unusual posture of walking blindly with my hands over my eyes for several paces whenever I saw a large, dark bird. I considered this a small sacrifice in the grand scheme of things, which was essentially keeping my two eyeballs intact!

Elliot Close was also where I met my first crush. He was a year or two older than me and, for all intents and purposes, was considered beyond cool. He had big blue eyes and olive skin, and jet-black hair, with a slick side-parting and a diamanté pierced ear. He lived in our block with his single mum and baby sister. It was one of the few places I could visit without Sean’s supervision on account that it didn’t involve me leaving the block and the fact that our mums were well acquainted.

It was so fun hanging out at his place because we could play and watch cartoons all day long and his mum was so cool, she let us eat Coco Pops right out of the box with our hands—what more could a kid ask for!

Don’t get me wrong, I thought my mum could be cool too, just not ‘eat-out-of-the-cereal-box’ cool. One area where Mum definitely racked up her cool points was with her car—a sporty white Ford Escort with a spoiler and a thin red racing stripe along the exterior. Even at my young age, I knew that her car was the business, and I would feel sheer exhilaration when she would start up the engine and the twin exhausts and muffler would let out a Formula one hum, commanding the attention of passers-by and fellow motorists alike.

I think that was the first time I thought of my mum as a ‘boss’. She was the only woman I knew that drove a sports car. I was proud of it and of her.

However, impressive as it may have been to look at, that’s about all you could do with it, because most of the time the darn thing wouldn’t start. Most early morning school runs were stifled by the non-compliant empty churning sound of the engine, as it would cough and splutter and refuse to turn over. It became almost standard procedure that whilst Mum would repeatedly turn the key, willing the engine to ignite I would be dismissed from the backseat to go and get help.

Which often consisted of running and buzzing the buzzer of Uncle C and Uncle Yan’s place to tell them down the intercom, Mum’s car won’t start again!

Uncle C and Uncle Yan were best friends and lived in the apartment down the hall. Their place was the ‘chill-zone’, full of bamboo and wicker furniture and the constant sweet and calming aroma of incense and candles filled every room. We loved visiting their place. Sean and I would play dominoes whilst sitting on African print leather pouffes on the floor as Mum, Uncle C and Uncle Yan played vinyls, sipped Guinness punch, and chatted into the evening.

Other times we would visit the Christian family on the ground-floor. They would always greet us with a warm and friendly welcome when we would bump into each other at the building entrance and often invite us over for tea and a bite to eat. They had the ideal playmates for Sean and me—an older daughter plus a boy and a girl our age. I was in such admiration that they had a big sister; she was so pretty and kind. She would let me sit on her lap and let us play games in her room. I was in awe.

Our Elliot Close family brought out the best in us and I loved how Mum was when we lived there. She was happy and content and our home was our haven.

My bedroom at Elliot Close was pretty and colourful and my bedroom accessories were all decorated with Rainbow Brite—an animation princess that was all the rage amongst my peers in the early 80s. Her cartoon show documented her many adventures as she transformed from the character Wisp from a dark and bleak planet into the colourful Rainbow Brite as she collected all the colours of the rainbow and became a ‘colour guardian’, fending off baddies that sought to steal her spectrum of light. I had the duvet cover, curtain set and wastepaper bin to match—my room was a vibrant, multi-coloured oasis.

Sometimes Sean would let me into his room, and we would play-fight with his Transformer action figures or play music tapes on his tan and chocolate-coloured tape recorder. We would race his toy cars and his big black and grey A-Team truck down the hallway. In his room, we would put our construction skills to the test and attempt to form a bridge from his desk to the bed with a quilt.

In the early days, I always remember us getting along, apart from the time when he discovered I had a phobia of doll’s heads being detached from their bodies and popped all the heads of my Sindy dolls off and lined them up outside my bedroom for fun; laughing hysterically whilst I squealed from my room refusing to come out.

I was much more of a solitary child than Sean growing up. Sean was always more sociable. He could move in any circle and behaved much older than his years. Even though he was only around six at the time, the big boys in the neighbourhood would always knock on our front door and plead with my mum to let him play out with them. For as long as I can remember, my brother could make friends with anyone, anywhere.

On a rare family holiday to Butlins, Sean went off to explore by himself and within hours, he returned to our holiday home having made friends with three or four other boys on the resort. I, on the other hand, spent much of the trip blissfully amusing myself and was oblivious to the fear and chaos I had caused when my mum reported me missing whilst I slipped out to the nearby fairground alone and enjoyed several rides on the Mexican Hat, only contemplating my return to our chalet once I had finally run out of fairground tokens.

Sean and I were polar opposites. I was bubbly, outspoken and theatrical yet I enjoyed my solitude—an introverted extrovert—who just loved to escape into her own world where there was boundless space and limitless imagination.

Books were my ultimate escape. I fell in love with the art of storytelling and the vivid imagery it evoked pretty much as soon as I could read. I loved the pictures and would become totally captivated by their artistic detail. I would study the illustrations for minutes at a time, attempting to imprint every detail in my mind before re-reading the passage again, and then attempting to recall to memory with photographic precision the pictures from the previous page.

I submerged myself as I allowed the words to pull me in and tempt me on a new, exciting, fantastical fictional journey. Books ignited my creativity, and I relished the opportunity of opening a brand-new book, inhaling that new book scent and cracking its spine for the first time. Books became my most treasured possession, they were my gateway to another world, my Tardis—transporting me to another realm in another life—and my coveted bookshelf consisted of endless possibilities, taking me wherever and whenever I wanted to go.

Despite the endless opportunities for adventure, my favourite books as a very young child were stories and poems that depicted lead characters who resembled my world or reflected me. I would re-read my favourite titles with such delight, Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman and Caroline Binch, and Carry, Go, Bring, Come by Vyanne Samuels and Jennifer Northway over and over; their stories comprising of tales of familial Caribbean delicacies and cultural traditions.

My favourite storybook of all time was Through My Window by Tony Bradman and Eileen Browne. The simplistic, yet charming story of a little girl eagerly waiting at the window for the return of her mum from a day’s work. The book follows the highs and lows of little Jo’s day as she races to and fro from the window, triggered by every resting car engine and squeaky garden gate in the desperate anticipation of her mum’s return. Only to be disappointed each time to see it was merely the local postman or friendly milkman coming up the garden path.

I felt a connection to little Jo. She emulated me in so many ways, normally a happy-go-lucky, spirited little girl, who was rendered lost and heartbroken when her mum left to go to work. I shared Jo’s feelings of emptiness whilst being left in the care of a guardian or childminder as Mum departed for work and could relate to that feeling of incompleteness that could only be filled by a mother’s return. The fact that Jo was also fair-skinned with a curly blondie-brown mane and looked like me only served to further solidify my affinity to her. Spoiler alert—at the end of the book, Jo’s mum returns and all happiness is restored.

Books were such a comfort throughout my childhood, and it wasn’t long after my introduction to them that I began writing and illustrating stories. Once completed, I would offer an exclusive, intimate reading to my teddy bears and dolls. Lining them up on the bedroom floor, I would sit and read my latest masterpiece aloud. Fine-tuning my storytelling skills, I quickly learnt how to vary my tone and speed to build tension and suspense, incorporating different voices and inflections in my speech to keep my ‘captivated’ audience entertained.

Turning the pages tantalisingly slowly, I would take my time before revealing my intricate illustrations, designed to accompany and enhance the pleasurable experience for my inanimate listeners. I was in my element.

When I wasn’t writing stories or poems, I was making music. If books were my first love, performing was truly my second. I would entertain myself to no end, singing along whilst I composed music on my mini keyboard. I use the term ‘composed’ loosely because at this point, I could not read music yet and certainly had not mastered the skill of singing in tune yet either!

Other times I would be confined to my room for hours, engrossed in making artistic, creative inventions out of the weird and wonderful things I had collected in my crafts box—cardboard, coloured string, buttons and glitter paint. Mum would occasionally peep into my room to coo and gush over my latest art project or stand laughing in the doorway as I chastised my least favourite doll in one of my self-penned one-woman plays. It wasn’t long before Mum signed me up for weekly ballet lessons as a much-needed creative outlet.

Saturday mornings became the highlight of my week, and I was wired from the minute I woke up until we arrived at the dance studio. The excitement would ebb through my body as we arrived, and I could hear the piano playing from