Martin Lewis, Editor

Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

Can you put up a flat-pack easel in 10 minutes?

February 27th, 2012 by Martin Lewis

Can you put up a flat-pack easel in 10 minutes?

Can you put up a flat-pack easel in 10 minutes?

I was filming for Watchdog on Friday morning. All was going well, until they said they had a blackboard which they wanted me to do sums on during a piece-to-camera – easy peasy lemon squeezy I thought – but then the producer dropped the bomb: "by the way, the blackboard easel’s a flat-pack and we want to film you putting it up on camera".

Cue a little internal gulp from me. While working out the sums and talking is second nature to me, putting up flat pack furniture – eek! Normally for things like this, Mrs MSE is near to help (OK, that’s a lie, Mrs MSE usually does it herself and tells me not to get in the way). I sometimes feel when I try these things I’m nonodextrous.

"Don’t worry" said the researcher, "the man in the shop said it should only take 10 minutes." Great, so now she’s given me a time limit beyond which I look silly too. So I took the pieces out of the box; wooden sticks, a joint and two different types of screws. Marvellous.

Picture me on a Covent Garden pavement, scrabbling around trying to work through the instructions (no words – just diagrams) dropping screws, planks, restarting and frankly muttering to myself as if I’d been on the Stella for the whole 17 minutes it took me. Thankfully the whole thing was a locked off camera shot, meaning it will be sped up and shown in a blur. I suspect I may look partially competent when that happens – the magic of TV.


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Giving my ‘dance teacher’ a shock

November 10th, 2011 by Martin Lewis

Giving my 'dance teacher' a shock

Giving my 'dance teacher' a shock

I decided not to say anything when my Lorraine producer said: "Don’t worry Martin, we’ve arranged a dance teacher and a dance class to teach you some basic steps for the Real Deals film, just turn up on the day."

As always with my Lorraine Real Deals films, we choose a location as a backdrop. The deals are never too visual so the concept is go somewhere fun and make it work. This week they’d set up a class with the Ceroc Dancers at a studio in a gym.

Everyone was so kindly reassuring about how it’d be easy. So when I walked in, having been introduced to Val the dance teacher, I decided to play up to it and pretend I didn’t have a clue.

Then her face dropped in shock as I span her round, picked her off the floor and dipped her over my knee. We then re-enacted it with the camera on…

Real Deals dancing film
(The dancing sequences are at the beginning and near the end)

What I’d not mentioned was that about seven or eight years ago dancing was my main sport/hobby. I’d go out dancing a couple of times a week for a few hours. I even had a couple of dance partners who were either teachers or professionals (in fact, the last time I danced on TV was with one of them, Tasha Sheridan, who was then one of the leads in Mamma Mia in the West End).

It was always partner dancing, though of no set style – as I’m not good at being taught anything formal, but it included lots of dips and lifts and throws.

Must admit it was a real revelation (or revolution with the spins) to get my dancing feet back on again. So with my MSE hat on, I should say that if anyone wants to give Ceroc a try, it’s great exercise, they give one free lesson and there’s lots of places around the UK that offer classes.


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The X Factor prediction champagne contest

October 17th, 2011 by Martin Lewis

The X Factor prediction champagne contest

The X Factor prediction champagne contest

Each year Mrs MSE and I have a game to predict who’ll be in the final five on The X Factor, and in what order. This year I thought I’d invite you all to join in too and I’ll send a bottle of the sparkly stuff to the winner.

My prediction:

1. Misha B
2. The Risk
3. Janet Devlin
4. Craig Colton
5. Johnny Robinson

Mrs MSE’s prediction:

  1. Janet Devlin
  2. Misha B
  3. The Risk
  4. Marcus Collins
  5. Sophie Habibis

Tell me your prediction

Simply post your predictions via the comments area below before next Saturday (not via the forum, as these posts can be changed later). 

The winner will be the person who gets the top five finalists in the correct order. If there’s a tie, the winner will be picked from those people at random. If no-one gets it, it’ll be the person who’s closest.

PS. I know there are many out there who don’t watch The X Factor and think it’s truly naff. That’s cool – different strokes and all that, but please no need for lots of comments telling us. This is just a bit of fun for those of us who do enjoy it.

Update 13 December 2011: And the winner is …

It wasn’t easy picking the winner, especially as at the time I asked the third placed contestant, Amelia Lily, wasn’t in the competition.

So, to go for the ‘closest’ answer, I first of all looked for everyone who picked Little Mix (or Rythmix as they were called then) as the winner. Then I tried to see of those who had, who had guessed the most other members of the top five. Three people all had two others of the top five (Janet and Misha) in their prediction, so I drew it out of a hat and the following is our winner:   

Miranda Rachel
1) Rythmix (or however it’s spelt).
2) Janet Devlin.
3) Misch B.
4) The Risk.
5) Sophie Habibis.


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Reports that “Tesco sales hit a 20 year-low” AREN’T true

October 6th, 2011 by Martin Lewis

Reports that "Tesco sales hit a 20 year-low" AREN'T true

Reports that "Tesco sales hit a 20 year-low" AREN'T true

I’m writing this having just watched the Wednesday (5 October) BBC Ten O’clock news, which twice had Hugh Edwards reading this headline…

Tesco’s worst UK sales performance for 20 years."

Frankly I couldn’t believe it, 20 years ago Tesco was far smaller, but when I googled the story I found over 500 articles from broadcasters, newspapers, websites and more all reporting the news in a similar tone. For example:

Now, if true this’d be more than worrying, as if Tesco’s UK sales were less than they were 20 years ago, it would be a massive and cataclysmic decline in the UK’s supermarket mammoth – whose growth has exploded over the last few years.

So I read through some of the articles, but still most didn’t clarify this stat, until finally I found where it came from in the Sky piece…

It is Tesco’s first like-for-like decline since 1991 at a time when consumers are cutting back to cope with high inflation and low wage growth."

In other words it’s not sales which are the lowest for 20 years, but sales growth. Its sales are still massive and I would suspect still bigger than any year in history, with the exception of a year ago (ie. they’ve dropped slightly this year).

To put this into perspective, it’s a bit like saying a car that started at 20mph, accelerates to 80mph and then drops to 78mph is now "slower than when it began", rather than the accurate "it’s the worst acceleration since it started".

What surprised me here isn’t that this was a mis-phrased headline that could be read the wrong way by one paper – that happens, I’ve done it myself. Yet this was an across the board interpretation. My suspicion is a newswire used the phrasing and people picked it up and ran with it. But for me, it’s simply wrong.

Am I being too much of a pedant?

When you saw the news heading, did you think its sales were worse than 20 years ago? Or did you realise it was simply the sales growth that’d dropped?

I’m all in favour of plain English, and use headline speak myself sometimes. So was this something that everyone really would’ve understood what it meant, and thus I’ve been overly pedantic and totally off base? Or did you read it as something else…?

Do let me know your thoughts below.


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A ‘cut the baby in half’ decision – their life, but my choice

August 4th, 2011 by Martin Lewis

'Pay off my debts? Or go on holiday?'

'Pay off my debts? Or go on holiday?'


It felt a bit like being asked to be King Solomon of finance on Radio 5 Live today. A woman emailed in with a: ‘Pay off my debts? Or go on holiday?’ family dilemma and said they’d do whatever I told them…

This was a big departure from my regular weekly 12pm Consumer Panel slot. It’s always fun and I suppose it’s because we all get on so well that they had no qualms throwing me this doozy of an email from listener Carol, live on air – far from my usual factual type questions…

Hi Shelagh can you ask Martin to settle an argument between my husband and I? In September our youngest goes to school – this will reduce our childcare costs by a whopping £600 per month.

I have no problem putting that towards our loans, credit cards etc. BUT I would like to take 1 month’s worth and put it towards a holiday, as we haven’t had a holiday on our own ever and haven’t had a shared family holiday in 2 years."

My husband thinks it should all go towards paying off debts. We will abide by Martin’s decision – what should we do?"

So live on air I had to make a decision. What would you’ve done?…

TO GIVE YOU TIME TO CONSIDER YOUR ANSWER – SCROLL DOWN

 

 

 

 

SCROLL A BIT MORE…

 

 

 

 

JUST A LITTLE MORE…

 

 

 

 

LAST BIT OF SCROLLING…

 

 

Initially I talked through the question, to buy myself some thinking time. Both Shelagh and Dominic Laurie (business presenter) said: "If you ask me, I’d say take the holiday". I hope it wasn’t too arrogant that that I said: "That’s the reason they didn’t ask you – this is all about guilt, she wants permission from the ‘Money Saving Expert’ and if she gets it they won’t feel guilty taking the holiday, it’s a confession thing."

All that bought me enough time to come up with my solution which was:

You can have a month’s worth of the cash for a holiday, but not now. You need to repay the debts for the next six months to get yourself in the habit of doing so – if you do that successfully then you can reward yourself using the seventh month’s money for a trip"

My logic is, that if you use the first month’s extra cash for the holiday – it’s the start of a sticky spending slope, as it becomes normal not to have the cash, so making yourself repay it in future is tough. What’s needed is to first build the financial discipline of repayments and then some delayed gratification once that’s well established, and a little bit of a reward for doing it right is fine as it should be easy to go back to repayments after.

Carol emailed back to say she was really happy with the answer and they’d do it. What would you have said?


Posted in Consumer, Just for fun, Media, Uncategorized | 15 Comments »

You CANNOT give 110% effort – an explosion of pent up nerd rage

July 15th, 2011 by Martin Lewis

You CANNOT give 110% effort

You CANNOT give 110% effort

I call on the mathematically literate to join forces to together defeat the scourge of "giving 110%". It’s a numeracy blight on the lexicon of our country and it needs to be stopped.

This morning on Daybreak, I had the joyful opportunity to vent on this. An Illinois town has banned boys from wearing baggy jeans that show off their underpants. So, we were asked what we’d ban – and this pent up nerd rage exploded from me (see related blogs for the history of this).

For non-pedants wondering why this phrasing that peppers sports vox pops and X-factor (barring JLS, who delightfully always give 100%) annoys me so much…

  • Maximum effort is 100% – 110% is beyond your capacity.

    Even 101% means you are making an effort beyond your actual capacity. Some may argue it’s justified as you’re increasing your effort beyond what you thought was possible for you – yet that’s irrelevant as the percentage is a measure of maximum output. You can still only give 100%. If your effort output has increased, you need to recalibrate, so what you before called 100% effort, should now be seen as 91% effort.

  • If it’s based on average effort, then 110% isn’t trying that hard.

    If we act generously and find a way to uncap the effort limit by arguing that the percentage given relates to average not maximum effort – then in fact 110% isn’t trying that hard.

    After all, we must assume that with roughly 1/3 of the day sleeping and much of the rest of the day not at optimal levels – that our average effort level isn’t so high. So, a 10% uplift over your normal effort is in fact a rather weak attempt, surely you should be giving 200% (double average) or 1,000% or a million, or a billion or a Googolplex percent effort? It’s all nonsense.

    In one past X-factor, crooner contestant Ray Quinn promised to give 210% and later Robert promised 150%. Did this mean Ray was going to output more effort than Robert? No, it means both of them were talking piffle.

Of course there’s a tongue in cheek element to this blog – and it could be argued ’110% effort’ has become a standard phrase (cliché) within the English language and so is permissible, we already have a nation blighted by numeracy issues. To perpetuate a misunderstanding of percentages to millions of youngsters simply isn’t good. So, it’s time we put 100% to use, to stop it. Rant over – over to you…

Related Past Blogs


Posted in Just for fun, Media, Uncategorized | 43 Comments »

Don’t believe everything you read in The Times about me and student loans

June 1st, 2011 by Martin Lewis

Don't believe everything you read in The Times about me and student loans

Don't believe everything you read in The Times about me and student loans

I was rather surprised to open up a copy of The Times to see: "Money guru enlisted to sell tuition fees as costing two pints and a bag of crisps". This shock headline is rather far from the truth – and actually quite far from the body of the article itself.

I have a sneaking feeling the headline was written before the story (you can see it here, although The Times has a paywall).

I was called yesterday by The Times and asked something like the following:

Q. "Is it true you’re helping the Government sell tuition fees?"

My answer was: "I am no fan of the new system and certainly won’t be helping anyone sell anything. Yet, I have had a meeting with the Government about financial education and I am worried about the fundamental misunderstandings many people have about tuition fees.

"For years I’ve said we’re a nation that educates its youth into debt, but never about debt and now I’ve got the chance I am talking to the Government about how to do this, as part of the campaign for financial education. The aim is to ensure people understand the real costs – there are so many misunderstandings it is wrongly scaring many off (and in some cases not scaring off some who perhaps shouldn’t go)."

Q. "Did you come up with the phrase it’ll cost two pints and a bag of crisps?"

My answer: "I’ve never heard of that phrase, it’s not how I would communicate it and it’s nothing to do with me."

Now, go back and read their headline and tell me where they got it from.

Most of the actual piece is pretty close, yet the headline will colour how people read it – and it’s so far off base. The real key is all the quotes are accurate and right near the end of the article it does actually state my position:

"I am no fan of the new system … but my great fear is that the political debate has muddied the waters so much that there is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the system works and this will cause as much damage to access as the tuition fees themselves."

Related past blogs


Posted in Education, Media, Money, Uncategorized | 9 Comments »

Am I really “the most powerful man in retail” as The Grocer magazine says?

May 23rd, 2011 by Martin Lewis

Am I really "the most powerful man in retail" as The Grocer magazine says?

Am I really "the most powerful man in retail" as The Grocer magazine says?

It’s a strange thing to read about yourself. The Grocer magazine’s ‘Power 100′ list is just out and has "No. 1 Martin Lewis, founder of MoneySavingExpert.com" ahead of the new boss of Tesco at No. 2. Yet, as I tweeted when I first officially heard…how come I still have to queue for 15 minutes at Morrisons?

When I first got a tip off about this on Friday, I was sceptical, thinking it frankly rather bizarre. Yet, having read the nomination this lessened somewhat. The ranking is far less about me and much more about the specific power of the users of MoneySavingExpert.com and the general power of consumers across the UK.

Here’s a short extract from The Grocer list, (to see it online you need to be a subscriber).

I still find it strange to be described as an ex-stand up comic – that’s slightly over-egging the pudding of a post-uni hobby.

"His following is biblical," said Tesco UK CEO Richard Brasher of the former stand-up comedian and his hugely popular moneysavingexpert website in March. And with five million subscribers to his free weekly emails, a weekly News of the World column, and regular appearances on ITV’s Daybreak, we believe Lewis currently tops even Tesco in terms of power.

In truth, this top spot finish is as much about the burgeoning power of the consumer as it is about the man himself. In the age of the internet, a shopper can now compare prices instantly, online, or even in-store via their mobile phones. But Lewis is the man at the front who waves the consumer flag, rallies the troops and shows them the way. In the process, his website (tagline: ‘Cutting your costs, fighting your corner’) has pioneered not only rival sites such as hotdealsuk.com; it has superseded Which?, Watchdog and the nationals as the consumer’s ultimate champion.

Lewis is happy to acknowledge he is very much part of a movement. To Brasher’s comments, Lewis responded modestly: "While the comment is attributed to me, it is of course about the site and the weekly email rather than me as an individual. I suppose if the boss of Tesco is sitting up and taking note, we’re certainly mainstream now."

This type of accolade for the power of consumers from a (or perhaps the) key trade publication of the retail industry is crucial. For years we’ve heard the phrase "the customer is always right", but it’s been a flaccid mantra rarely met, or at best met at a superficial customer service level rather than any deeper level.

Yet, with the growth of the internet the power of collective consumerism has blown the face off this. While there is still a long way to go, the soft end of consumer activism – finding the best deals, working together to try to find the best solutions and not be mis-sold to – has seen the agglomeration of information speedily redress the power balance between companies and consumers.

These days if companies get it wrong, it’s not just a case of them losing out on sales, but they may be swamped with hoards of complaints or people taking advantage of lax terms and conditions of promotional deals, in much the same way as the companies have taken advantage of consumers for years.

With consumers at number one in the power list, albeit with my boat race as a symbol, it’s a realisation that the game is changing and if they want to be successful, retailers need to understand that it’s consumers who can make or break them. As the editor of the magazine says in his editorial comment, "The consumer is no longer king. She is an empress."


Posted in Consumer, Media, Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

My minute-by-minute (political) day in the life…

August 13th, 2009 by Martin Lewis

It’s been a while since I blogged one of my days (see the ‘It’s a typical day’ blog)…

Yesterday was a tough one, as I was hardcore tired after Tuesday (which is always a long day as I get picked up at 6:40ish in the morning to do GMTV, then focus on the weekly email for the rest of the day. I rarely finish before 10pm).

Normally I get to recover on Wednesday mornings, but yesterday was different:

  • 6.25 am. Alarm.

  • 6.55 am. Taxi motorbike to get to GMTV.

  • 7.15 am. Arrive, go to the green room & meet the producer looking after my slot.

  • 7.35 am. On air to do a four minute slot on redundancy planning, based on new unemployment figures.

  • 7.40 am. Leave studio, have a chat with Wendi Peters in the corridor & lift (ex Coronation street actor, now in new play)

  • 7.45 am. Go to the 2nd floor cafeteria, get my laptop out and start checking through emails. We’ve just gone live with the Lib Dems pledge parliamentary motion on automatic bank charges payout story, so my priority is to see the impact.

  • 8.00 am. The cafeteria opens, and I’m about to get breakfast when the producer comes down. We then run through the email questions sent in so far to try and balance the range of questions.

  • 8.20 am. Walk back up to the studio.

  • 8.35 am. On air again for a five-minute slot on redundancy, this time answering viewers’ questions.

  • 8.45 am. Meet with the planning editor, Owen, about next week’s slots.

  • 9.05 am. Leave GMTV and walk to Trafalgar Square.

  • 9.25 am. Arrive in Trafalgar Square; finally get some breakfast in a place with free wi-fi.

  • 9.30 am. Open up the laptop to go through every link from the weekly email and see how it’s working. Call MSE Dan in the office and we discuss if we need to make any tweaks in the email for the second batch to be sent.

    • (more…)

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Record 878,000 web visits in one day – a billion hits a month

August 4th, 2009 by Martin Lewis

Last Wed (27 July) was the biggest single day the site’s ever had; a monster 878,000 people came to the site (inc. Main site, forum, tools etc) beating the previous record of 854,000 set in January.

While it mightn’t seem it, overtaking a January record is important; the site’s constantly growing, but like all money sites seasonal trends affect it, and the start of the year is always disproportionately enormous, as everyone’s sorting their cash out. Therefore to have beaten Jan in July is great.

It was also helped by the fact last week’s email was jam-packed with big subjects and savings – one of the strongest we’ve ever launched – and we got the email away without any major blocks from Internet providers (the email goes to so many people sometimes even big email clients can’t cope with the volume and just block it as a defence).

A bit more info for stat nerds.

Now as I’ve noted here before, you have to be careful when quoting web stats, as people use incorrect terms.

To give you an idea here’s the exact stats for last wed (sourced from our internal Google Analytics numbers):

  • Unique users: 710,900 different people visited the site in a day.

  • Visits: Those people made 878,000 separate visits between them (ie some came more than once)

  • Pages: They looked at 3,241,000 different pages on the site between them.

Now it’s also important to note that these stats are the DAILY numbers, whereas web stats are usually quoted and compared monthly, and again July was huge.

  • Unique users: 7,920,000 different people visited the site in a month.

  • Visits: They made 15,335,000 separate visits.

  • Pages: They looked at 68,156,000 different pages.

You’ll note there’s no “hits” figure in there. That’s because frankly it’s meaningless, it’s just about how many objects e.g. images are on a page, so a site could have lots of hits without many users just because it has lots of objects. That’s why many small sites use the term. It sounds impressive, but means nothing.

For that reason we don’t track it, but i suspect MoneySavingExpert.com now has over a billion hits a month…

Comment and Discuss

Posted in Media, On the web | Comments Off

Over-egging the stripes on GMTV

July 30th, 2009 by Martin Lewis

Slightly annoyed with myself. As my slot ended today, Emma complimented me on air about my shirt (a bright purple one – stripy of course)

So I told the tale of how I’d bought them: there were three similar ones of different colours, and I’d got 25% off after asking for a discount. It’s all about haggling.

The moment the cameras were off I realised while I had bought three and haggled, they were different shirts. With this three, they’d just rounded the price down a few quid…

Lets hope the shirtmakers weren’t watching!

Comment and Discuss.

PS. If you wonder why so many shirts, that’s the nature of telly (and running a forum where people comment on them all the time – gotta keep it fresh!)

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Big Brother’s flawed wealth test –a missed lesson

July 24th, 2009 by Martin Lewis

In last night’s Big Brother, two of the housemates, Kenny and Siavash, were put through a “wealth” test. It involved correctly naming the prices of various objects from a pint of milk to a top end Ferrari.

Yet for me the entire premise was fundamentally flawed (I know it’s Big Brother so I’m not taking it too seriously), much like the 1980s and 90s television programme “The Price is Right”.

To prove my point let me ask you a question..

“How much does a pint of milk cost?”

HIGHLIGHT THE SECTION BELOW AFTER YOU’VE ANSWERED IN YOUR HEAD…

If you answered numerically somewhere between 40p and 80p you’re in the right ballpark – but still in my view totally wrong.

The only real way to answer this is with another set of questions “where is this pint of milk bought from, and is it a particular brand?”

We do not live in a world where a pint of milk is homogenous: there are different brands of milk and even they are sold at different prices in different stores. A pint in a huge Tesco is likely to be substantially cheaper than at a train station convenience store.

In many ways ignoring that ignores the entire premise of this site and the values of many of its users. We live in a world of commodities, where the same or very similar goods are sold in many places dressed up in many different ways for vastly differing prices – the aim of MoneySaving is to buy the same thing but pay less for it.

It’s a shame, especially considering the audience that Big Brother reaches, that this was missed (though I’m not saying that’s their remit): a real test of wealth would have been able to spot the difference in prices and which is the best bargain, not just knowing the absolute price of things.

Now admittedly when I started watching the quiz, my assumption was that it had been missed due to what TV regulatory rules call “undue prominence”. That means unless there is a justifiable reason you shouldn’t focus on any one store or product.

Yet I was later surprised when one of the questions asked what the cost of a loaf of Warburton’s bread was. My suspicion here the programme’s lawyers felt it was justified to name a particular brand of bread, because otherwise the variance in price would have been too great, therefore this was necessary and thus due prominence (though where you buy it counts here too).

Yet in my view the difference in cost of a pint of milk at various stores would have made it equally as justifiable to specify that in the question too.

Could it be the reason this was missed is the message “it’s not just what you buy, it’s where you buy it” still hasn’t spread widely enough?

Comment and discuss

PS. I think Siavash is going to win this year!

Posted in Media | Comments Off

I almost went to France

July 6th, 2009 by Martin Lewis

Some days are strange….

    • Left home went to London’s Charing Cross Station
    • Got the train to Dover
    • Ferry’d to Calais
    • Stayed on the ferry at Calais
    • Ferry’d to Dover
    • Am currently on the train back to Charing Cross

All this to do a 90-second film for GMTV on mobile roaming, about what counts as being abroad.

France… Je ne le pense pas

Comment and Discuss.

Posted in Media | Comments Off

Steal Pepsi Max: promoting theft of their own product.

May 18th, 2009 by Martin Lewis

I saw the new Pepsi Max TV ad last night , and was slightly bemused. The ‘Pepsi Max guys’ are at a cricket match. In a chiller box the steward has a raft of Pepsi Max cans. A streaker runs on the pitch, the steward chases her, and when he returns the Pepsi Max has gone. Yet our ‘heroes’ are drinking cans of it, and then the punchline… one of their number returns to his seat taking off his girl disguise suit.

Now while it’s meant to be funny, it’s effectively showing the brand heroes stealing the drink. The message is meant to be Pepsi Max is cool and naughty, but it also seems to indicate that nicking it is fine too and just a laugh. What a rather silly premise; I suspect supermarkets and vendors wouldn’t take the same view if people decided to follow Pepsi’s ‘help yourself’ motif from their stores – never mind the company itself.

Am I just having a sense of humour failure…

Comment and Discuss.

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Apparently my Stiffies was cut!

May 7th, 2009 by Martin Lewis

I’ve been appearing in dictionary corner on Countdown this week. The shows were actually recorded back in March. As you can see from my blog at the time, Doing Countdown and getting a rude word to boot, I had a fun time.

It was yesterday’s (Wed) episode that was supposed to contain the rude word, and while I haven’t seen it myself I’ve been told it wasn’t broadcast.

So I can now reveal (if you didn’t guess from the blog title) the word was “stiffies”. Now there’s no doubt it’s a word, and is in the dictionary; the problem is there’s only one definition, which isn’t that easy for mid-afternoon telly. Luckily for Countdown, as it was from dictionary corner not the contestants, it’s possible to edit it out without impacting the result of the game.

As it wasn’t broadcast I can tell you the full story now. Once we realised what the word was, as the clock was ticking down, I wrestled with whether to say it or not and tried to come up with a way round it saying something like (from memory from two months ago so give or take):

“Well we do indeed have an eight letter word here. Now it’s an interesting one for this time in the afternoon, and so to make it easier I thought I would explain how to think about it.

When you walk past a shop they often have mannequins in the window. Some of these are flexible and can be positioned any way you want, while others are rigid and unmoving. So if you had a collection of these you could call them “stiffies”.

Comment and Discuss.

Posted in Just for fun, Media | Comments Off

Fawlty Towers: Uncle Terry wants a Gin & Tonic

May 5th, 2009 by Martin Lewis

Quite a strange experience tonight. Watching Fawlty towers and up pops the MSFs Uncle Terry (Terence Conoley). I always knew he’d been in it but until tonight had never seen him.

He’s actually in two episodes. The first was the very first Fawlty Towers “A Touch Of Class” where he constantly demands with ever increasing fury a “Gin & Orange, a lemon squash and a scotch and water”.

What was rather surreal is the fact that having seen it before I knew exactly who the character was, but until watching it now it’d never clicked that’s who Terry was. After seeing it I realised how many other things I’d seen him in. Terry is now nearly 90, and full of wonderful stories, with a fantastic cut glass accent and manner (he’s an ex-opera singer too).

Having seen the first it was a quick fast forward to the the next one he was in – the “Waldorf Salad” episode. Again he’s playing an irate “Mr. Johnson”, this time in a wig, which apparently he went shopping with John Cleese for, to ensure he wasn’t recognised as the same actor from the first series.

Go “Uncle” Terry!

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How credit ratings work: coming full circle.

May 5th, 2009 by Martin Lewis

I’m just finishing work on an ITV1 Tonight for Friday 8 May on credit ratings on how they work and how to boost them. As always when filming a detailed programme like this I learn new useful titbits which I can add to the guide (see credit ratings).

Each time though, it tends to be something even more niche and technical, this time it was that you can delink your credit score if you’ve a still open but not active joint account, plus for the first time looked into fraud scoring with National Hunter (the guide should be updated with that by tomorrow).

What was funny about this though is my first EVER TV package was on credit ratings and how they work. It was back in January 2000, I’d just left the BBC and was starting at Simply Money TV as a reporter. The channel hadn’t launched yet and we were doing films for pre-launch; so I did a six-minute film on how credit ratings work.

It was back then I remember coining the phraseology I still use now: “Credit ratings don’t exist. Credit Blacklists don’t exist. Each lender has its own unique scoring system to work out if you’re a profitable customer.” Thankfully no editions exist on You Tube; it was a long time ago and I was a rather shy first time 27 year old new reporter (I’d been a producer previously).

I’ve since written and done a lot on credit ratings, and each time the knowledge base grows. This particular programme was fun to do as we had a panel with James, who runs education for Experian, and mortgage broker Ray Boulger of John Charcol. I think by the end of it we’d all learned little titbits off each other and hopefully the programme’s better for it.

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Ugh! Terrible slip. BT free line installation not line rental. Choking isn’t good!

April 30th, 2009 by Martin Lewis

On my GMTV Lorraine slot this morning, I was talking about BT’s free line installation deal (see free BT installation note). It’s a rare chance to avoid the usual £122.50 cost.

I’ve just had one of those calls … the producer rang to say “can I just check, at the end of the piece, you said free line rental. That was just a slip wasn’t it?” It seems BT has had calls requesting free line rental and has called GMTV.

From what I recall, I choked just before as I was speaking (you’ll remember if you saw it) and had to stop, it threw me a bit. The whole piece was about line installation, but it shows that even one word misplaced towards the end can be a problem. I suppose if I thought there was a small chance of free line rental I would’ve called too.

Though it’s very frustrating – especially as I wasn’t aware I’d done it until I got the call.

So sorry BT & anyone who saw it … sometimes the wrong word comes out.

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The recession’s over … it’s recovery time!

April 23rd, 2009 by Martin Lewis

Great news isn’t it? Listening to yesterday’s budget, the political buzz-phrase that kept ringing out was “as we proceed to recovery”. Isn’t language marvellous? We went from boom-time, to downturn, then recession lasted a week, and now we’re “heading to recovery”.

Call me old fashioned, but when the economy is due to shrink 3.5% this year, according to Alasdair Darling (4.1% according to the IMF), that’s still in the serious mire of recession.

I suppose by the same logic, we should start referring to premiership footballers as “heading for the commentary box”, or newborn babies as “heading for retirement”.

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I almost missed my award.

April 21st, 2009 by Martin Lewis

I’ve just come back from the London Press Club lunch, where I was delighted to pick up the “Consumer Journalist of the Year” award.

Not coming from a print journalism background I wasn’t aware of quite how big a do this was and when I got there realised most of the National papers editors and many high profile top hacks were there. On my table alone were the Editor and Dep Ed of the Times plus Robert Peston (who deservedly won Biz Journalist of the year).

Not my finest hour.

Now of course I’m very chuffed to have got such a prestigious trophy, but that aside, it honestly wasn’t the best day.

When I first heard it was on a Tuesday, I said I couldn’t go. Firstly, it’s my GMTV morning, then working on the weekly email for the rest of the day until late in the evening. There’s never a moments break. I was, however, persuaded that it would be “stoopid” not to attend.

Yet when I woke up this morning for my 6.40 transport to GMTV, I felt very sick, and I’ve been seriously nauseous all day. So much so that when I left filming at GMTV at 12:30 to go to the awards, I deliberately didn’t take my make-up off; I’m so green otherwise I think it’d scare people.

Toilet Break at a bad time.

Lunch was nice, I sat next to a lovely lady from British Gas who runs British Gas’s regional PR department (they were the award sponsors) in Cardiff and is a site user; she thankfully kept my mind off my green gills.

Then the awards were about to start so we checked the order. As it seemed mine was the third one, I nipped out to the loo. Sauntering back I saw my name on the screen, realised it’d been the first award, and heard them announcing that I’d won. I ran in, in a bit a fuddle, walked up said thank you.

Then I ending up sitting back down in the wrong chair (one belonging to Sir Christopher Meyer who was presenting the awards) and embarrassingly then had to get up again and walk back to the right one.

No chance to thank the News of the World.

Worse still, these things are quite political and I had wanted to thank the News of the World, for being different and giving a money columnist a place up the front of the newspaper (most money columnists are kept in the money ghetto). In these times they do try and grasp the fact that practical news is a real help to people.

Yet when I said “do I say something” as I got the award they said no. Then I found out that while I was out they’d said “please keep speeches short or do none at all”, and virtually everyone else thanked the organisations they worked for. So I hope they don’t feel snubbed! Let me say thank you here… thank you.

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