Martin Lewis (financial journalist)

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This article is about the British financial journalist. For the UK TV newsreader of similar name, see Martyn Lewis (journalist). For other people named Martin Lewis, see Martin Lewis (disambiguation).

Martin Steven Lewis (born May 9, 1972 in Manchester, England) is a journalist, television presenter, and author in the United Kingdom, who specialises in ways to save money.

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[edit] Current career

He has his own ITV daytime show Make Me Rich as well as occasionally presenting ITV1's Tonight, and is regular "Money Saving Expert" on several others (including BBC One's The One Show, Watchdog, Five's The Wright Stuff, ITV1's LK Today, This Morning and Richard Hammond's 5 O'Clock Show) as well as appearing as a guest expert on many news and other programmes.

He also has a regular phone-in on BBC Radio 2's Jeremy Vine show and a weekly column in The Guardian. He is the author of a bestselling book, The Money Diet [1].

Yet perhaps most influentially, he created and runs the website MoneySavingExpert.com. This is ranked the biggest consumer and personal finance site in the UK with over 2,500,000 users each month and over 1.1 million receiving the Martin's Money Tips weekly e-mail. [2]

[edit] Early career

His undergraduate degree is in Government and Law from the London School of Economics, and after graduating he spent a year as elected General Secretary of the LSE Students' Union. After this he worked for London financial Public Relations firm Brunswick [3] and did stand-up comedy part time [4]. In 1997 he left to do a postgraduate degree in Broadcast Journalism from Cardiff University's Centre for Journalism Studies [5].

After graduating he went to work at the BBC Business Unit as a producer on BBC Radio Five Live Business programmes and was then an Editor of the BBC Radio 4's Today Programme Business Slot [6]. This was followed by the satellite TV channel Simply Money where he developed the Money Saving Expert role.

Simply Money ended in 2001, following that Martin started writing a weekly Deal of the Week column in the Sunday Express newspaper, and doing MoneySavingExpert slots on Five TV's Open House with Gloria Hunniford, BBC Radio 4's Moneybox [7]. and as a business and personal finance reporter for BBC1 Breakfast News [8]

[edit] Campaigns

During late 2005, the issue of reclaiming unfair bank charges was highlighted and a few small websites started to highlight the issue. Since, he has been at the forefront of the media campaign to reclaim these unfair (and unlawful) fees charged by UK banks[9]. He presented the first mainstream TV programme on how to get your money back (ITV1's Tonight) and followed it up on 23 Feb 2007, and in November 2006 published a step-by-step guide, including template letters which speedily achieved its 1,000,000th download towards the end of February 2007 [10] as well as regularly appearing across the media to champion the issue.

On 26 January 2007 he presented a programme Tonight on Council Tax Cashback [11], a campaign to get everyone in the UK to check and potentially challenge their council tax band, that first started on his website MoneySavingExpert.com leading to thousands in backdated windfall payments. It is predicted that this may grow to the same scale as Bank Charge Reclaiming.

[edit] Petitions

Martin Lewis in conjunction with the MoneySavingExpert website have launched two petitions relating to the advertisements of secured loan products on TV.

  • The first aiming to have the adverts banned from children's television which received 43,000 signatures[12].
  • The second appealing to Carol Vorderman to stop appearing in secured loan advertising. Lewis felt that Vorderman was seen by the general public as a credible figure because of her mathematical skill demonstrated in TV programmes such as Countdown. This petition had over 80,000[13] signatures and newspapers reported that she threatened legal action to try to stop it[14]

Both of these campaigns have been the subject of Parliamentary early day motions[15].


[edit] Trivia

  • In 1995, as General Secretary of the LSE Students Union, after Mick Jagger was elected the Honorary President of the students union (the college he had dropped out of), Martin presented Mick with the award at Wembley Stadium and informed that he had an 'open offer to continue his degree in Accounting and Finance' at any point - he declined. [16]
  • He is going out with Five News weather presenter Lara Lewington [17].
  • Lewis was specifically named in an Early Day Motion of the House of Commons [18]

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Scotsman, Martin Lewis, moneysaving champ. Retrieved on 2006-09-03.
  2. ^ Statistics from Moneysavingexpert. Retrieved on 2007-02-15.
  3. ^ Martin Lewis MoneySavingExpert Biography. Retrieved on 2006-09-03.
  4. ^ MoneySavingExpert Forums Martin Lewis comedy background post. Retrieved on 2006-09-03.
  5. ^ Martin Lewis MoneySavingExpert Biography. Retrieved on 2006-09-03.
  6. ^ MyVillage website Martin Lewis interview. Retrieved on 2006-09-03.
  7. ^ Martin Lewis MoneySavingExpert Biography. Retrieved on 2006-09-03.
  8. ^ BBC Business Report 2001. Retrieved on 2006-09-03.
  9. ^ Bank Charges: Reclaim your money. Retrieved on 2006-08-27.
  10. ^ --"The Independent. Retrieved on 2007-02-22.
  11. ^ "Council Tax Cashback: Reclaim £1000s. Retrieved on 2007-01-20.
  12. ^ Debt: Not In Front of the Children. Retrieved on 2006-08-27.
  13. ^ The "Carol Vorderman: Secured Loan Ads Don't Add Up" Appeal. Retrieved on 2006-08-27.
  14. ^ Martins Money Tips Email 9 May 2006 (scroll down for details). Retrieved on 2006-08-27.
  15. ^ Early Day Motion - Debt: Not in Front of the Children Campaign. Retrieved on 2006-08-27.
  16. ^ Martin Lewis Mick Jagger Forum Post. Retrieved on 2006-09-03.
  17. ^ Blog MoneySavingExpert. Retrieved on 2006-09-03.
  18. ^ House of Commons Early Day Motion Number 564. Retrieved on 2006-09-03.

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../m/a/r/Martin_Lewis_%28financial_journalist%29_28da.html"