NHS role is Desert Island dream

Jul 30 2007 by Alan Weston, Liverpool Daily Post

A HIGH-FLYING business executive and mother-of-six has said she may pursue a career in the NHS after the experience of nursing her dying daughter.

Wirral born “superwoman” Nicola Horlick, who won her nickname for her ability to juggle a high pressure city job and a large family, was speaking on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs yesterday.

The 45-year-old made her name in business as a fund manager for London financial firm Morgan Grenfell Asset Management.

But it is her dedication to her six children, while doing so, that has won her national recognition. Yesterday she spoke of her first-born child, Georgie, who was diagnosed with leukaemia and spent much of her life in hospital before her death at the age of 12.

Ms Horlick, who attended Birkenhead High School for Girls, was full of praise for the NHS during that time.

“I get angry when people criticise the NHS,” she said.

“ I think we are very lucky that when someone does get hit, and it doesn’t matter who they are and where they come from, they will be taken to hospital and be treated.”

Ms Horlick said that she would like to work professionally for the NHS.

“I would simply like to give something back partly because I know a lot about the NHS.”

She said her career as a high-flying city executive was largely an extension of her maternal instinct, with her nurturing the companies she worked for.

But she added it was also her daughter’s illness that helped her to focus on her career.

“I don’t know what would have happened if Georgie hadn’t been ill,” she said.

“But I suspect that part of the frenetic building of the career was an escape from having to deal with the horrors of this terrible illness.”

Ms Horlick also told the programme she had children partly to compensate for Georgie’s illness.

“This great primeval instinct just comes out when you are threatened with having a child taken away. It just gives you this desperate urge to have another child. So we did.”

Ms Horlick rose to prominence having helped turn around Morgan Grenfell Asset Management, but after falling out with them she set up her own investment firm Bramdean.

However, she said she disliked the “superwoman” tag.

“I blanch at it because I think that somebody who is in a really successful position and gets paid lots of money and has lots of help at home is not a superwoman.”

Among her music choices was Walking in the Air, which was sung at Georgie’s funeral by another daughter, Alice.

Her other musical choices included works by Mozart, as well as songs by Simon and Garfunkel, and Bryan Adams.

She chose a bath to have as her luxury item on the mythical desert island.

alanweston