Telford 24 Seven

“Static nanny” Mavis Price is a force field to be reckoned with.

For 50 years she had hushed up the fact that she could make televisions explode with a single touch and had the potential to blow her collection of John Wayne plates off the wall.
But when she idly mentioned that she’d blown up 15 vacuum cleaners, two dozen irons and fifteen kettles, static nanny Mavis Price sent shock waves around the world.

Mavis Price - the Telford grandmother who conducts electricity

“It was a throwaway comment I made that I carry a lot of electricity in my body and that I have blown all these things up, and now I get called static nanny or the electric lady when I take my grandson to the local school,” says Mavis of Lawley Bank, Telford.

That throwaway, but amazingly true, remark by the sparky 60-year-old was made at the start of the year, to 24 Seven magazine’s parent publication the Shropshire Star, which ran her story.

The supercharged granny was famous overnight. Richard and Judy, Phillip and Fern, The Paul O’Grady Show, national TV news, BBC Midlands Today, dozens of radio stations every non-self-respecting red-top newspaper, including The Mirror and the Daily Mail, wanted their 25 Watts’ worth of Mavis.

She even found herself staring up from thousands of coffee tables in Chat magazine.

A website message board that goes under the banner “Do You Know Mavis Price?” has been set up to pay homage to her pyrotechnic particulars. Global news agency News Team International wanted to be her agent and people as far away as Bangkok and Houston, Texas, read her tale in their morning papers.

She explains: “They’ve all been after me. I can understand all these kids saying they can’t cope with the fame because my phone was going every five minutes.

“It was crazy. My neighbour became my unofficial secretary!”

She adds: “I’ve even had to sign several copies of Chat for people.”

Mavis has no idea why she is prone to carrying so much charge, just that her ‘positive’ approach means wherever she goes she leaves a trail of carnage.

She has blown up televisions, a photo-enhancement machine, an entire computer suite at college and several supermarket checkout desks.
One day in October of last year Mavis must have been fully charged because after reaching for the light switch and blowing out the electrics of the entire house she went to Tesco to buy some fuse wire – and knocked out the checkout.

She recalls: “As I walked to the checkout it bleeped and nothing happened. Everything was out. The girl said ‘nothing like this has happened before’, and I told her ‘I carry a lot of electricity, love’.”

Mavis was still in a state of flux when she approached the store’s photo-enhancement machine.
“It’s a lovely machine, but you’ve got to touch it,” she explains. “I said to the lady: ‘Before you go any further, I carry a lot of electricity – can it go wrong?’.”

Predictably, Mavis was assured that, no, it couldn’t. And just as predictably . . . “I touched it and it stopped. She came back five minutes later and I said: ‘I thought it would’.”

Tesco is not the only superstore whose electronics quiver at the sight of Mavis. There have been ‘paranormal’ goings-on at Asda when Mavis tries to scan her shopping with the self-service gizmos. “If I use it I get the message: ‘alien item near facility’,” she jokes.

Careful! It’s static granny Mavis Price.

There is no sign of her current surge drying up either. Today Mavis happily reports: “Recently in the supermarket I’m getting a problem with chip and pin. When I put my card in, it freezes the machine. I just put the first number in and it says ‘remove the card’.

“It’s my static electricity. The lady on the checkout had a go and put my card in and it worked fine. The next time I went in and she said ‘Oh, it’s you, that static woman.”

Like lightening that’s not fussed, Mavis is likely to strike at all the major supermarkets. “There’s only Morrisons I’ve not had a go at . . . but I’m thinking of going down there,” she smiles.

The list goes on. Mavis immobilised her friends imobiliser on quiz night, but the future is looking bright for static nanny Mavis who is being courted to appear in new Channel 5 series entitled High Maintenance Mums.

But returning to earth, she explains how her home is fitted with circuit-breaking plugs to prevent her from blowing up all her electrical appliances – along with herself. And anyway she is pro-active in taking evasive action – she avoids buying expensive household items and touches wood a lot.

“I should be working for the National Grid,” she says. “But I’ve spoken to an electrician and he says it’s one of those things. He said ‘You just carry a lot of electricity’.”