Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis is an award-winning TV & radio presenter, national newspaper columnist and bestselling author.
He's an ultra-specialised journalist, who spends his life focusing on how to cut bills without cutting back. Martin is 35 years old, was born in Manchester, grew up in Cheshire and now lives in North Kensington, West London.
TV, Radio and the papers
As well as creating, running and writing this site, Martin is phenomenally busy. His work includes...
Five TV's It Pays To Watch. Martin presents his own show MoneySaving magazine show... It Pays To Watch at 7.30pm on Wednesdays. The first two series ran back to back from January to May 2008 and the third series is due to start in Sept 08.
ITV1's Tonight. For the last three years Martin's been a regular presenter of ITV1s Tonight (Mons and Fri at 8pm) bringing detailed half hour MoneySaving shows and exposes to a prime time ITV audience.
Resident Expert on GM-TV. He's also GMTV’s resident Money Saving Expert, with a slot every Tuesday morning on GM-TV and Wednesday morning on LK-Today plus ad hoc news reactive interviews.
Radio 2 Vine and Radio 1 Whiley. Martin's radio work includes a fortnightly hour long Friday lunchtime phone-ins on BBC Radio 2's Vine and a regular slot on Radio 1 Whiley.
National Newspaper Columns. In print Martin has his own weekly page in the News of the World, a fortnightly column in the Sunday Post a syndicated column in a range of regional newspapers and regular page in monthly magazine Moneywise.
As well as these regular slots, Martin's constantly interviewed and appears on a range of other programmes including Moneybox Live, BBC1 Watchdog, Five's The Wright Stuff and the ITV News. And just to get really silly, he's even had a featuring credit in a top 40 chart hit... I fought the Lloyds.
Previous work...
In the past, amongst other things, he’s been a columist for the Sunday Times, Guardian and Sunday Express, has his own ITV1 daytime series Make Me Rich, which is still repeated on ITV2 and resident expert on both ITV1s Richard Hammond 5 o'clock show and This Morning.
Martin's books The Money Diet, Three Lessons & Thrifty Ways have all been bestsellers. The updated edition of the Money Diet followed in the footsteps of the first edition by topping the Amazon Bestsellers list. This time it was number one for over two weeks, knocking Jamie Oliver and Sharon Osborne off the top spot.
What other people have written about Martin
While Martin's very often quoted on ways to save money. Though please don't believe everything you read in the papers, not all the facts are right. Only those available online have been included.
Manchester Evening News (Feb. 07) Mr Supersaver's on a mission
The Independent (Feb. 07) The consumer champion behind growing rebellion
Sunday Herald Magazine (Jan. 07) Lend me your arrears (PDF file - it's big so may take a minute to download)
The Sunday Post (Dec. 06) Britain's Mr Thrifty Is Sharing All His Secrets (PDF file)
Eastern Daily Press (Sept. 06) Time to get Consumer Revenge on Christmas (PDF file)
Hello! (August 06): The high price of not tackling our financial ignorance (comment piece written by Martin, its a PDF file)
Moneywise Magazine (March 06): A True 21st Century Cash Saving Champ (PDF make take a minute to download)
Telegraph (Jan 06): This man can save you £6,000 a year
The Guardian (Dec 05): Cashing in on being a real nerd
Metro (Dec 05) 60 second interview
What does Martin say about it?
If you ask him what he does for a living he says,
“I'm a broadcaster by training, and presenting programmes or talking about money on the telly & radio is my job. When I originally set up this site in Feb 2003 for £100, it was barely more than a home page. Yet without spending on marketing or advertising, it has become the huge monster it is.
It staggers me that it's now has nearly five million people in the UK using it each month and is ranked the biggest consumer & personal finance site in the UK - for that massive thanks are due to many regular MoneySavers kindly recommending it to their friends.
I was hugely proud, gobsmacked even, recently when there was a specific motion in the House of Commons to support the site. It's one of the reasons I strive to keep the original intimate one-person feel of the site, and why every word of every article goes through me. More importantly, I deliberately retain 100% ownership. This way regardless of scale it can retain its ethical stance."
Read more on this site and its history .
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Martin's Background
Martin specialised into MoneySaving on a small, now defunct, Sky Channel called Simply Money. After that he started writing a column for the Sunday Express and started his first terrestrial Money Saving Expert slot on Open House with Gloria Hunniford.
Before focusing on MoneySaving, he worked on personal finance and business programmes in the BBC's Business unit and has reported for BBC1, BBC Network Radio and even spent time as a Business Editor of Radio 4's Today Programme. Prior to that he worked ‘for the other side' as a City Spin Doctor, advising major companies on how to communicate, and dabbled in stand up comedy to ‘relieve the tedium' at the time.
Martin has a postgraduate degree in Broadcast Journalism from Cardiff University, and is a graduate of the London School of Economics, where he was also General Secretary (President) of the Students' Union.
Read an interview with Martin by site users...
Some of the names Martin has been introduced as
"Like Nicky Campbell with much bigger balls, Martin Lewis is a man who gets mad, then gets even. Tonight, the financial enforcer investigates the mis-selling of payment-protection insurance."
- The Indie's Pick of the Week Comment on Martin's Tonight
“The Dumbledore of debt”
- Paul Ross, This Morning
"The consumer champion behind this growing rebellion"
- The Independent
“The UK's biggest financial anorak”
- Paul Lewis, Radio 4's Moneybox
“If anyone can help, it's this man. Martin Lewis knows more about credit cards than possibly anyone else in the country.'
- Justin Rowlatt, BBC1 Panorama
“The UK's Tightest Man”
– Philip Schofield, This Morning
"A FINANCIAL revolution is here and it's all thanks to the money-saving genius that is MARTIN LEWIS ."
- The Sun
"Calm down Martin, it's only a Radio Programme"
- recorded specially for Radio 2 Vine programme by Michael Winner!
(listen to it)
"Mr Lewis is to financial institutions
what Kryptonite was to Superman"
- Willesden and Brent Times
"A Fiscal Superhero"
- Channel 4 Teletext
"Stripy-shirted tightwad money saving expert Martin Lewis"
- Michael Clarke, This is Money
"Tiggerishly excitable"
- Sunday Times, critics pick for Martin's ITV1 council tax cashback programme
To keep up to date read
Martin Lewis' Blog
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