When the beautiful young German woman met the animal rights campaigner, she never imagined that she would become his dead lover’s biographer. David Charters reports

"SHE’S gone.” That’s what the nurse said. She whispered it in a kind voice, a voice that had probably said it many times before, just two words for a life. She’s gone.

But where did Vicki Moore go to?

Maybe it’s not too much to hope, or pray, that she is now in a place, where the animals roam free – not in a sentimentalised way like a Disney movie, but in the wild spirit that she would have understood herself, of new life joining old life in the eternal cycle.

After all, she believed that animals have souls just like humans. Of course, we can’t be sure that she’s right, yet.

But, if it is true, we would like to think of her up there with them, this mercurial woman, once a bunny-girl, whose life changed dramatically when she found a cause – then sacrificed her life in the hope people would stop tort-uring and humiliating animals in the name of sport, or some perv-erted demonstration of manliness.

On June 25, 1995, in one of those deeply sorrowful ironies, Vicki was gored while trying to prevent a crazed mob inflicting any further hurt on a bewildered bull.

When she fell, he stood over her broken body, still. His own body was pierced by many spears.

For days, Vicki hovered between life and death, but gradually and painfully she recovered. However, it was those dreadful injuries that five years later caused the massive internal haemorrhage which killed her.

To admirers in the animal rights movement, she was almost a saint and that’s how she looked in the early days with her long black hair and nun-white linen smock.

Others, including Tony Moore, her “husband” for 27 years, realised that she wasn’t a saint, but she was certainly a woman of profound passion.

By quirk of circumstance, Vicki’s biographer is the woman who followed her into Tony’s affection.

And today he is sitting in a café with a cup of cappuccino considering the book, Life on the Line: The Heroic Story of Vicki Moore.

It can’t be easy to write about your man’s former lover. But Matilda Mench has deep sympathy for her subject, with whom she holds the same basic conviction. All sports, entertainments and other recreational activities, which involve cruelty to animals, should be banned.

But don’t think for a moment that this is a grim or single-tracked book. Matilda is celebrating Vicki’s life, which involved plenty of singing, joy, acting, fun and love, as well as an extraordinary childhood with her mother, Louise, a showgirl of Gipsy inclinations, who had four husbands, the fourth being Vicki’s official father, an archaeologist. It is more likely, though, that she was a product of a brief liaison between Louise and a Spanish sailor. Some thought this explained her dark complexion.

Vicki was born in Northamptonshire with the rather grand name of Lucille Eva Valentine Seel Haywood. Everyone called her Lucille until she met Tony and settled with him in his home in Southport.

He’s a fine guitarist and she had a voice both sweet and powerful. They formed a duo, touring the clubs, and she took the stage name Vicki Moore.

It was widely assumed that Tony and Vicki were married, but they had never been through a formal ceremony, though they were a husband and wife in every other way – Vicki even adopting Tony’s surname.

There was also the question of age, which Matilda came across while doing her research. All the newspaper and TV reports said that Vicki died on February 6, 2000, aged 44. She was, in fact, 54.

But why not? The passing years should have no place in the life of a beautiful woman.

At the heart of the biography are the campaigns which Tony and Vicki waged against bull-fighting, fox-hunting, rodeos, blood fiestas and hare-coursing. They, and people of a similar mind, have had some successes. Hare-coursing, including the Waterloo Cup at Altcar, near Orkmskirk, and fox-hunting are banned in this country. Measures have been introduced to lessen the cruelty of some blood sports abroad, but many continue in their traditional form.