Martin Lewis

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:44

My castaway this week is the financial expert, TV presenter, and campaigner Martin Lewis. 17 years ago, he founded the website Money Saving Expert. His campaigns on issues like money and mental health and court victories over bank charges and PPI have made headline news. Successful crusades on the behalf of the consumer have earned him the nickname the Dumbledore of Debt. 13 million of us receive his weekly money tips mail out. Whether he still uses them himself is a question we'll get to later. He sold his shares in Money Saving Expert back in 2012 for £87 million. While saving money may be second nature, he's no Scrooge. His charitable trust gives vast sums to good causes. Most recently, he set up a coronavirus poverty fund to help charities to continue to support those in need. Britain's financial superhero has never been needed more, but are superheroes born or made? He says some people can hear a piece of music once and play it on the piano. I'm quite lucky that I can look at the terms and conditions of a credit card and see how they work. It's not as sexy, but it's useful. Martin Lewis, welcome to Desert Island Disc.

Martin Lewis1:54

Far, far less sexy.

Presenter1:56

So Martin, you call yourself an accidental entrepreneur. Why?

Martin Lewis2:01

Because I never set out to make money. When I set up moneysavingexpert.com, I see myself as a journalist, now a campaigning journalist. And it was set up partially to promote my broadcasting work, which was started out. I'd been to Cardiff University, I'd done a post-grad in broadcast journalism. I was interested in personal finance and empowerment. And I set the website up to make that work. Originally, when I set it up, it had no way of making money. And it was only when it got bigger and bigger and the server costs started to explode, so that it was costing me a thousand pounds a month, which out of a freelance journalist's salary was a big whack that I was struggling to afford. I had to find some way that it could pay for itself. So I put these affiliated links on transparently, ethically, giving people an alternative choice, always saying when it worked, never changing my editorial on the back of it. And that was almost something that was accidental. I didn't expect it was going to make quite the revenue it does or provide the amount of wealth that I now have. I suppose it goes back to journalism school. And everybody sat around and they all said what we wanted to do, and there were some brave people who wanted to be war correspondents. And I talked about at the time I'd like to be an expert on a show like this morning.

Martin Lewis3:13

And they looked at me and said, why? Why do you want to talk about money there? And the answer is quite simple. Because when you watch those programmes, you know, they have the psychiatrists and they have the doctors and their stylists and their hairdressers and all of these people who make people's lives better.

Martin Lewis3:28

But you can't do any of it if you don't have the money. If you want to start talking about how you truly affect people's lives, you put cash in their pocket to begin with. And that's the greatest form of empowerment you've got in our society.

Presenter3:39

And Martin, it's not all about the money today, of course. It's all about the music on Desert Island discs. And it's time to hear about your first disc. Tell us what we're going to hear and why you've chosen it.

Martin Lewis3:49

I need to admit something here that may be difficult for listeners of Desert Island discs to hear, but I've never really listened to music. Music has not been a big part of my life. I hadn't really ever bought a record or a tape or a CD until I had my daughter. But there was one period in my life when music played a slightly more important role because in my 30s I got really into dancing, which will surprise some people. And I used to go out and probably dance 15-20 hours a week, partner dancing, you know, lifts and swings and turns and spins. And I wasn't bad. I had quite good feet. Thank you very much. And so welcome to Living a Vida Loca by Ricky Martin.

Martin Lewis4:42

And the lips are dead.

Martin Lewis4:45

And the skins are colour

Martin Lewis4:48

See the wheel where you are. Living the view

Speaker 24:52

Okay.

Martin Lewis4:53

Uh

Speaker 24:53

Living the Viva Loca Living La Vida Loca

Presenter5:02

Ricky Martin and living La Vida Loca off to a flying start. Martin Lewis, thank you very much. There's a lot to dig into today, Martin, and we're going to get to as much of it as we can. But of course, your skills are very much needed at the moment. We're speaking in times of great financial insecurity for people. How busy have you been?

Martin Lewis5:21

Feels to me like it did when I first set up the website and I was on my own working 90 hours a week, completely focused and zoned in on what I was doing. And these days I don't work by myself. I have a wonderful team. There's nearly 100 people who work on Money Saving Expert. And I've got my T V team and all the other teams I work with too. But I'm fully back, totally engaged, sitting at my desk 70 hours a week because

Martin Lewis5:49

Well, it's needed. We're in an economic cataclysm as well as the health issues we've got. Economically, we've never seen anything like it, and the state has put incredible support mechanisms in place in a very short space of time.

Martin Lewis6:03

But originally I thought there were some people who were left between the cracks, and now those cracks have turned into fissures, and we realize that there are large numbers of people who aren't supported and aren't going to be supported.

Martin Lewis6:13

I know

Martin Lewis6:14

I think the the work that I've done for the last twenty years has been building almost up to this, and suddenly here I am.

Martin Lewis6:23

I feel that this is the position I was put in. All the work I've done and the trust I've built up and trying to do this, suddenly I find myself in a time where it really needed somebody who is outside of the Westminster political bubble, but is still in touch with that bubble and in touch with what's going on with real people's lives to be able to put their point across, find the information for them and fight their corner. And social media has been very helpful for doing that. You know, I've had well over 100,000 questions in the past five or six weeks via TV or my other website or the social media forum. And just trying to bring that all together to help people. It feels like I'm fully back on mission, if you like. I don't know how much longer I can keep doing it because I'm exhausted.

Presenter6:43

Proof.

Presenter7:00

You use the word cataclysm, Martin. Where do you start with something like this? I'm thinking of our listeners sitting at home. What's the best advice that you have for people who are at home feeling vulnerable and worried right now?

Martin Lewis7:13

Hope

Martin Lewis7:15

Hope that it will get better. They talk in economic terms about the graph. And what we have to hope is we're in a V. So a very sharp decline and a very steep rise at the back end of this. There will be financial casualties to this. People who lose their jobs, their livelihoods, and it's very difficult to return. But we all have to hope that our society will return to normal, both in its health sense and in its financial sense. And that there will be enough care and consideration for everybody from the state and from our fellows in society to make things better.

Presenter7:50

Martin, it's time to go to the music. Disc number two. What is it and why have you chosen it today?

Martin Lewis7:54

If I try to think of the first song that I remembered, and it goes back to my primary school days, and there was a song in the playground, and it was all about the performance and the videos. It's when videos were just coming in that we all used to sing together and thought was really cool. And it sort of gives me memories of my early days. So people of my type of age will remember this one. Adam and the Ants. Stand and deliver!

Martin Lewis8:21

Next year's on next picture, start

Martin Lewis8:25

Yeah.

Martin Lewis8:27

Are we alive?

Martin Lewis8:37

On the

Speaker 38:38

Dandy Heidelman, so sick of easy fashion The clumsy boots, pickaboo ropes that people think so dashy So what's the point of robbery when nothing is worth taken? It's kind of tough to tell a scre-

Martin Lewis8:49

That's the big mistake it's made good. Start

Martin Lewis8:52

Deliver money will you love?

Presenter8:56

Adam and the Ants and Stand and Deliver. So Martin Lewis, you grew up in Norley in rural Cheshire and attended a Jewish primary school. Did you have a particularly religious upbringing?

Martin Lewis9:06

You don't have a particularly overly religious upbringing in the middle of Cheshire when you're Jewish. But yes, my religion was an important part of my life and still is. I'm a secular person with a religious bit on the side, if you like. You know, I was one of only two Jews in my senior school when I went on to later.

Presenter9:23

And that sense of being, you know, one of just two in your upper school, how did that impact on your identity?

Martin Lewis9:30

It's an interesting time when you look back on it, because my nickname was Jew.

Martin Lewis9:36

It started off with Jewie Louie and Lou the Jew and it became shortened to Jew and I look back now and I'm offended with my

Martin Lewis9:43

Current environment, but it was just the way things were then. I don't feel that was anti-Semitism or I suffered a deliberate form of prejudice. It was just more the way the 1970s and 1980s worked. But all of that did cement my identity into me. I mean, I went to a cathedral school, and in the morning there were prayers, and there were 600 or whatever it was, boys in that school. And when everybody knelt down to do the Lord's Prayer, there were only a few of us who sat upright and said nothing. And that's quite formative. Sitting up when everybody else in the room, when you're 12 or 13,

Martin Lewis10:24

is kneeling down and saying something and you're saying nothing. Actually, I do think there's a certain level of individuality that was educated in me that it's okay to be different, and it's okay not to do what everybody else says you should do if it's not right for you.

Presenter10:40

Like for you. Mm. You were good with numbers from a young age, I know. Was your promise spotted at school?

Martin Lewis10:45

It certainly was in my junior school. Myself and another boy were quite a long way ahead and were put on different work to others. And my dad was a headmaster, so that came out with it as well, and he would push us forward.

Presenter10:52

Um

Speaker 210:52

Uh

Martin Lewis10:58

I think I'd done all my times tables when I'm four, if I remember it correctly from what I've been told. So I could do my times tables before we started school, and that was always something very easy. And I was probably my mental arithmetic was probably better when I was eight or nine.

Presenter11:04

Tables.

Martin Lewis11:12

Than it is now. Maths was always something that was innate, and I never really saw the difficulty in it.

Presenter11:18

It's time for some more music, Martin. What's next and why?

Martin Lewis11:22

When my little girl was younger, our two next-door neighbours were both musical. One was an opera singer, and the other was an actress who sang. And they both heard her sing when she was two or three and independently said, She's pitch perfect. I wasn't even sure what that meant, but I knew it was good. And she's learning to play the keyboard at the moment. She loves to sing and do all that type of thing. And one song that just caught between the two of us that she thought was so much fun, and it's a duet between two people, and it's a great little funny thing to do with a child when I was showing her music from the 1940s that we now sing sillily together. So I have to take that to a desert island. So this is Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. Let's call the whole thing. Potato, you like tomato. I like tomato. Potato, potato.

Speaker 212:11

Tomato, tomato, let's call the whole thing off.

Presenter12:17

But oh

Presenter12:20

If we call the whole thing off, then we must part.

Presenter12:25

And oh

Presenter12:28

If you have a part then that might break my heart so

Martin Lewis12:34

If you like pajamas, I like pajamas, I'll wear pajamas.

Presenter12:39

Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald Let's Call the Whole Thing Off.

Martin Lewis12:39

Uh

Presenter12:43

So Martin Lewis, another good cause that you've been involved in is a bereavement charity and you've been working with them for a number of years. You lost your mum in a tragic accident just before your 12th birthday. Now looking back at your younger self, at that little boy, what sort of counselling might have helped you at the time?

Martin Lewis13:03

Anything at all.

Martin Lewis13:05

My mum was there one day and she wasn't the next. That was it. And none of us knew how to deal with it and we were all stunted by it at the time. And it was this was 1984. You didn't have counselling. Certainly you didn't have counselling in rural Cheshire. And so we had to get on with it. That was the end of my childhood. Ended on that day. And I struggled very, very hard, as we all did, for a long time. And I'm still not over it. Just better at dealing with it.

Presenter13:25

By struggle

Presenter13:31

I'm not surprised. I mean, completely devastating thing to go through.

Martin Lewis13:35

I am.

Martin Lewis13:37

I never went out until I was 18. Never left the house, couldn't leave the house because I wasn't at home when it happened to my mum and I couldn't cope with leaving the house because of the thought of something else could happen. And it was very difficult because when all my friends at school were going to parties when they're about 15, 16 and meeting girls and things like that, which I would have liked to do, I couldn't cope with it. So I made up this lie that I had a social life because I went to a non-Jewish school that I had a Jewish social life and that's where I went, which was a complete lie.

Martin Lewis14:07

When I was about seventeen,

Martin Lewis14:09

I went to a boys' school and one of the girls on the coach invited me to her party, which was revelatory for me, and I really, really wanted to go. Of course my dad was delighted he was going to drive me, my store my stepmum was going to drive me, and they were going to take me'cause wow, they were really happy to see me going out of the house.

Martin Lewis14:26

But I honestly had no clue at seventeen what you wore for a party. Did you wear a suit? Did you wear jeans and a T shirt? What did you wear? And I got myself into such a panicked anxiety about it that in the end on the day I said I was feeling sick and I told myself I'm not feeling very well and I didn't go. And I never went out to a party or the pub or anything until I left school at 18.

Martin Lewis14:46

And so, um, my life was very it wasn't very happy, my teenage years at all.

Presenter14:50

It sounds to me and from researching this and and listening to you talk, it sounds to me like your perspective on yourself then and on that experience is changing.

Martin Lewis15:01

I mean, I'm not going close to opening up too much now, but I'm at least able to enunciate the fact that I did lose my mother. I did lose my mother just before I was 12. And in a horrible, horrible way. You know, she was, yeah, on the road. And I maybe need to forgive, I think, some anger with myself and my reaction for not being able to deal with it probably when I was younger and how I'd missed and thrown those years away. And now as a father, and I look back, and I was a little boy. I was a little boy struggling to deal with something that nobody should.

Martin Lewis15:37

Nobody should be deambling with at that age.

Presenter15:41

Martin, let's take a break for some music. What are we going to hear next?

Martin Lewis15:44

So the next song

Martin Lewis15:46

Is almost a little bit of triumphalism. I went to work on summer camps in America in my holidays in university. I did it four times. And this was probably the thing that brought me out of the darkness and the malaise. It was when I started to properly make friends. There were other things as well, but when probably.

Martin Lewis16:04

Make friends with people and have a social life and realize that life could be good and enjoyable and exciting and fun and you could tell jokes and it was a wonderful time in my life.

Martin Lewis16:13

And it was a Jewish summer camp I went to, but a liberal Jewish summer camp, much less religious or orthodox than I had been used to growing up, which was lots of nasal singing in the synagogue in Hebrew. Whereas this was a female rabbi with a guitar singing songs around an outdoor amphitheatre with all the children, and I was one of the counselors there and we'd sit all around on a Friday night. And there was a song that we used to sing. And this was sung by the kids. So you're going to hear a sort of proper musical version, but the one that means more to me was actually singing it yourself with silly lyrics and versions of it. It brings back the time when I think my life restarted, which was probably around when I was 20. And so this is almost an anthem of that for me. Well, this wasn't the version I listened to. And this is Joni Mitchell and the Circle Game.

Presenter16:24

Yeah.

Speaker 217:00

Elder She

Martin Lewis17:01

They go round and round and the painted always go up and down.

Martin Lewis17:10

We're captive on a carousel

Martin Lewis17:18

You can't return, you can only look

Martin Lewis17:21

Behind from where we came

Speaker 217:24

And go round and round and round in a circle.

Presenter17:32

Joni Mitchell and the Circle Game. So Martin Lewis, after sixth form, you went to the London School of Economics to study government and law. And you said of the experience, I discovered that I had an inbuilt responsibility chip. What form did that take?

Martin Lewis17:48

I was always the one, if you're going out as students, who would check everyone was all right and do all that type of thing. When you go from the life I'd have, it's like being a flipped pancake.

Martin Lewis17:59

That suddenly, from everything being dark and down and depressing, suddenly I was just wanted to.

Martin Lewis18:06

Just experienced things to the full, and nothing could hurt me. And I was loud, and you couldn't fail to notice me and engaged in everything I could. It's a very political, or at least was then a very political university with incredible experiences. You know, I remember during the Yugoslav conflict, sitting at a table in my hall of residence, because it's very overseas, with talking with a Serb and a Croat, and an American, and someone from China, an Australian, and two people from Germany, and talking about that conflict.

Martin Lewis18:39

With all these different perspectives, it was just, from a little boy from a forest, it was just awe-inspiring.

Presenter18:46

When I was getting ready for the interview today, I was looking through some old photographs and cuttings and I saw a really remarkable picture of you at LSE back in your time there, you and Mick Jagger, both grinning. I need to know the story behind it. How did you come to meet?

Martin Lewis19:04

LSE operated an honorary presidency system, which was by a vote. And in my year, when I was General Secretary, or President of the Union, if you like, it was Mother Teresa, Yitzhak Rabin, and Mick Jagger. And to all of our surprise, Mick Jagger, who was promoted by the entertainment sabbatical, a guy called Gary Delaney, who's now stand-up comic and he's a mate. Gary proposed Mick Jagger and Mick Jagger won.

Martin Lewis19:30

Now Mick Jagger had been at the LSE. He did two terms of accounting and finance, then left to pursue his music career, which I hear from his tutor, who his tutor at the time says you'll never make any money from this, but it'll be ready for you when you come back.

Presenter19:42

It'll be ready for you.

Martin Lewis19:44

He won and Gary and I went to meet him to present him with his honorary presidency at Wembley Stadium when he was doing a concert. And I was empowered by the school, the LSE, to say that they had checked and his degree was still open and he was still welcome to come back and finish it whenever he liked. And we chatted for about probably 45 minutes an hour until he said, I've probably got to go and do a concert now. It was just one of those.

Martin Lewis20:12

Marvelous experiences. Meeting Mick Jagger when you're that age, going to Wembley Stadium. We got to see the concert afterwards. We were in hospitality, which was very nice for students. They were very, very posh pucker grub, I remember at the time. And yeah, it was j it was just fantastic.

Presenter20:30

Disc number five. Mr. President.

Martin Lewis20:32

Let's go for uh satisfaction, the rolling stock.

Speaker 220:41

I can get no

Speaker 220:45

Seven

Speaker 320:46

Shut up

Speaker 320:49

Can get more sentister

Speaker 320:53

Show me this I tried

Speaker 320:56

And try

Speaker 320:58

I'm drawing.

Martin Lewis21:00

Uh

Presenter21:09

The Rolling Stones and Satisfaction. Martin Lewis, after leaving university, your first job was in financial PR, learning what you call the black art. So I take it it didn't suit you. Why not?

Martin Lewis21:19

If it's seen

Martin Lewis21:21

It wasn't that it didn't suit me so much. It just felt naturally I was on the wrong side. I mean, 90% of working at that firm was about keeping your clients out of the papers, not putting them into the papers. It was about, you know, looking at corporate messaging. It was one of the very big firms out there. And it was a wonderful place to have worked, to start to learn about how that corporate world worked. But innately, I felt I was on the wrong side.

Martin Lewis21:47

And I was doing well there, and they talked about me having a strong future there, which is one of the reasons I left. I thought I need to go before the salary gets too big that I can't quit.

Presenter21:55

And I know that you were doing stand-up to kind of relieve the tedium, I think was the expression, the quote from you that I saw.

Martin Lewis22:03

It was exactly what I was doing. We had brought a stand-up club to LSC while we were there, mainly Gary. And I teamed up with Gary and he wrote for me. I did alright. I came second in the Hackney Empire New Act contest. I won the Comedy Cafe New Act of the Year and went on with Harry Hill and that type of stuff. But I knew stand-up wasn't really for me.

Presenter22:22

What was the grand plan then? You you did go back and do broadcast journalism at Cardiff University after working in PR and and doing the stand up. So was there an aspiration to make it in T V and be in front of the camera? Was that what you wanted?

Martin Lewis22:37

And that was part of it. It seemed to be the good mix between the stand up and the financial PR, if you like, being a broadcast journalist. The ability to go out there and talk and communicate and get the message across, but still working within a serious genre.

Presenter22:50

When did it become clear to you that it it was something that was going to change people's lives and impact people's experiences?

Martin Lewis22:58

Yeah, I knew that the personal finance stuff impacted people's lives, and that is still something really important.

Martin Lewis23:04

It started to become more than that in around 2004, 2005. Two things happened around then. One was the bank charges campaign, which was huge and really started to explode my career. As I started doing template letters online, it sounds really old school now, but there weren't many people doing that. And I did template letters for bank charges reclaiming. I mean, there were six million of them sent. You couple that with meeting a friend of a friend who was a mental health caseworker who told me how much he loved my website. And he said, Oh, yeah, don't help me. It's all my clients. Well, their finances are awful. And I spend most of my time helping them and realizing just how prevalent money problems were for people with mental health issues. And that's when I realized this mattered.

Presenter23:47

It's time to go to the music, Martin. What's next, and why?

Martin Lewis23:51

So we talked about stand-up comedy before.

Martin Lewis23:54

And I just thought I'd throw in a funny memory, if you like. And I just have a couple of things that I would do involving music. One was I would come in with huge false eyebrows and I would play Eine Kleiner Nacht music and make my eyebrows dance in time because I had been blessed with independent movement of either eyebrow.

Presenter24:12

Uh

Martin Lewis24:15

Just showing us.

Presenter24:15

Just showing off now.

Martin Lewis24:16

The other thing I did is I used to play a song using my nose and ear.

Martin Lewis24:26

I can give you a tiny bit of it now as an introduction to the main song if you'd like.

Presenter24:30

Oh, please do. Yes, please. Thank you.

Martin Lewis24:31

Is this a desert island of this first? I'm just going to tap myself to do this.

Presenter24:34

I believe so, yes.

Martin Lewis24:36

And genuinely it is my nose and ear.

Speaker 224:45

Shoo zoo six

Martin Lewis24:59

I won't do any more, I'll just introduce the Blue Danube.

Presenter26:00

The Blue Danube waltz by Johann Strauss, performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent, apart from Martin Lewis's nosework, which was all his own.

Presenter26:11

You have a a hugely trusted position, you occupy a very trusted place in in the public psyche, second only to the Queen, according to some polls, as the mother of the mm.

Martin Lewis26:20

Depends which pole depends which pole.

Presenter26:21

Yeah.

Presenter26:23

But in 2018 you were the victim of scam adverts on Facebook. They were using your picture. What was your reaction when you first realized what was happening?

Martin Lewis26:31

Well, it was pretty horrible to be honest. The first person who really notified us, they were using scams for these things called Bitcoin Trader, nothing to do with Bitcoin, I just scams using the get-rich quick idea of Bitcoin. And these adverts promised that I backed it, I made all my money from it, and I'd give you the money back if you lost anything. And we had an old gentleman who got in touch very angry with me, asking where his money was. And then when we found out what was going on, you know, we wanted him to give... give us his details so that we could help him and he was quite angry and said why would I give you details you scammer it's a bit of a slap in the face when you spent your whole career with sort of advanced paranoia not to do anything wrong which is how I live my life

Presenter27:11

I s

Martin Lewis27:12

To have somebody treat you that way. And that was the tip of the iceberg, as people will know. Not wasn't what I particularly wanted to spend my time doing, but we started the scam campaign that resulted in me suing Facebook, which was one of the scariest things I've ever done. I settled in a very good way. You always get flat for these. Why did you settle? Well, because I've been advised by my lawyers that had I gone to court, I might have won 50 grand. And I should say, this was always a campaigning lawsuit. I always said I'd never take any of the proceeds. And I settled for £3 million donation to set up Citizens Advice Scam Action, which has one-on-one facilities to support people who've been scammed or in the process of being scammed. And the UK now has on Facebook the first scam reporting button. So if you see a scam ad, you can press a button and report it, which doesn't exist on Facebook anywhere else in the world.

Presenter27:59

Martin, it's time to take a break for some music, and I believe that this next choice takes us back to another happy court result for you. Tell us what we're about to hear and why.

Martin Lewis28:08

Well, it wasn't my court result, but I was known as the big gob in chief of the campaign against bank charges, unfair bank charges for busting your overdraft limit. Horrendous things, you know, people who didn't know they'd gone over their limit spent 30 quid on shopping in seven shops and then got a £35 fine for each one that they were then unable to pay, so they had charges on the charges. It was a form of financial entrapment. A band came to me and said, we've written a song about bank charges and you're in it. And I thought, that sounds fun. And we decided we would release it as a single. And one week before the release in the January, so in the December, the chart company made an announcement. It didn't mention us by name or me by name. It said, due to protest songs attempting to rig the chart system, I'm paraphrasing.

Martin Lewis28:56

We are changing it so that it is not the number of downloads that have been paid for that counts, but the number of tracks that are actually downloaded. So even though we'd clearly sold enough to have been number one in the charts, which I thought would have been an amazing protest,

Martin Lewis29:12

We actually got in at only number twenty seven, but we did get a top forty out of it. So if I may proudly introduce

Martin Lewis29:21

Oyster featuring Martin Lewis.

Martin Lewis29:25

Playing the track I Fought the Lloyds.

Speaker 329:29

But my life got so much better Oh yes it did when I looked on and saw those

Speaker 329:37

Sexy little template letters Yeah, it's us against the banks, time to sign that petition Play this song outside your local branch till they listen Come on you bankers, give us our cash Cause we won't stop singing till we

Martin Lewis29:51

Get it all back, yeah, I fought the lawyers and you can do it too Tell the listening bank it's time to leave

Presenter29:58

Oystar and I fought the Lloyds. Martin Lewis, I'm about to cast you away on our desert island. How will you cope with the boredom?

Martin Lewis30:06

I'll have to find myself a task. I mean, I'm not particularly good at physical work and DIY, but I will have to learn and I will have to continue to imp improve and iterate and build a home there. I think I will just have to find constantly things to get busy. And if not, I'll just have to find some injured animals to help or something. I don't know.

Presenter30:23

You've been married for ten years and you're a devoted father, we can clearly hear. How will you get on in your own company on the island, do you think?

Martin Lewis30:30

That's that's the thing that won't work.

Martin Lewis30:33

You know, without my wife and my daughter, that's total misery. I can cope without anything else, but not without them. This is a great theoretical exercise, but that's the bit I won't imagine.

Presenter30:44

There's just time for one more disc before we cast you away, Martin Lewis. What's it gonna be?

Martin Lewis30:49

Well, I had a track earlier for my daughter, so I couldn't have something that didn't remind me of my wife. When we started going out in the days when she would allow me to do this, I'm banned now since we had a child, I'm not allowed to ride a motorbike anymore. But we would occasionally hire a motorbike when we were on holiday and we'd sit there and we'd sing this song in the sun on the back of a moped, both wearing helmets, being safe, I should note. So, this was the first song that we danced to at our wedding. And so, therefore, this is the song for my wife. And it's Frankie Valley and the Four Seasons. Can't take my eyes off of you.

Presenter31:28

You're just too good to be true.

Presenter31:32

Can't take my eyes off

Presenter31:36

You'd be like heaven to tell

Presenter31:40

I wanna hold you so much.

Presenter31:44

At long last love has arrived

Presenter31:48

And I thank God I'm alive.

Martin Lewis31:51

You're just too

Presenter31:53

Good to be.

Martin Lewis31:54

Uh

Presenter31:54

Uh

Presenter31:55

Can't take my eyes off you

Presenter31:59

Frankie Valley and the Four Seasons with Can't Take My Eyes Off You. So, Martin Lewis, I'm sending you away with three books: the Bible or the Torah if you prefer, the complete works of Shakespeare, and one of your choosing. What will it be?

Martin Lewis32:13

It's a very deliberately mercenary choice. Most of my reading tends to be escapism. I like historic novels or science fantasy. Now, it isn't my favourite science fantasy novel, but it is the biggest. So, I've never actually watched the programmes, but if I am allowed the complete collection of Game of Thrones, it's 5,000 pages, it's in the right genre, and I think it's one of those series you could reread a few times and just take up a bit of time with it. So, I'm going to go for the complete Game of Thrones, if that's allowed, please.

Presenter32:45

I'm going to say yes and allow it. I know you'll probably find a loophole anyway, even if I said no. So I'm going to wave that through and move on to your luxury, something that will make your time on the island a bit more bearable. What would you like?

Martin Lewis32:47

Boom.

Martin Lewis32:57

This has been very difficult choosing my luxury. My favourite gadget at home that I use all the time is an electric carving knice. I use it for cutting bread. I use it for cutting broccoli into nice thin strips. I tend to press it to the Eye of the Tiger song. Might make my daughter put that on if I'm about to carve something. And so I also thought if I'm on the island, because you're not allowed, it has to be a luxury. So it's a luxury for cutting food. I'd like a solar-powered one, obviously. But I also thought I might sneakily be able to use it for some practical, you know, cutting through some branches type stuff as well.

Presenter33:27

Yeah

Presenter33:33

Well now your luxury can't be practical, so I'm gonna have to forbid luxury.

Martin Lewis33:35

It is a practical physical luxury just for cutting food. If I happened occasionally for it to drop out of my hand, fall and cut a branch unnecessarily, then that wouldn't be the primary intention. So I'm going for an electric carving nice solar panel. Thank you very much, miss.

Presenter33:49

Okay, I'm going to pretend I didn't hear the other thing that you just said and say for luxurious use only, I'm going to allow that as well. And finally, which one of these discs would you save above the others if you were forced to do so?

Martin Lewis33:56

I'm gonna

Martin Lewis34:05

So, clearly, the choice would be between the song for my wife and the song for my daughter, and I can't choose between the two of them. So, in the end, I'm going to go back to the first track because it's quite joyous, it made me dance, and we've danced around the house, the three of us, together to this song. So, I'm going back. Let's take Ricky Martin. I think if you need a lift, you need a lift, don't you? And on a desert island, you will, and that gives you a lift.

Presenter34:26

Left

Presenter34:29

Martin Lewis, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you.

Martin Lewis34:33

Thank you.

Presenter34:46

Hi, I hope you really enjoyed that podcast with Martin Lewis. We have cast away many other campaigners and economists to our island, including Dame Esther Ranson and Dame Minoosha Fik. You can find them in our archive by searching the Desert Island Discs website and also through BBC Sounds. Join me next time when I'll be talking to the fitness instructor and healthy eating expert, Joe Wicks.

Martin Lewis35:23

I find quantum mechanics.

Speaker 335:25

Hello, I'm Brian Cox. And I'm Robin Inks, and the Infinite Monkey Cage is back for a new series. We are dealing with so many fantastic ideas. And even better, no one that we've asked has got an alibi for getting out of doing the show. So in this series, we have got one of the first episodes alone. We talked about the end of the universe with Brian Green, Katie Mack, Eric Idle, and Steve Martin. Yes, you heard that. Steve Martin and Eric Idle are joining us. Anyway, enjoy the new series. We're having a fantastic time making it. Brian's particularly enjoying it because he's hundreds of miles away from me and they're just using technology to create some sense of proximity. That's the great thing about it all.

Martin Lewis35:26

Yo

Speaker 235:59

Well, that's the infinite monkey cage on BBC Sounds Now. Well not now. I mean there's no unique definition of now in physics. It's simultaneous relative. It's on BBC Sounds anyway.

Martin Lewis36:10

Unless you've got that Robbie Nince and Professor Cox, I'd leave that poor pussy alone in its box.

Speaker 236:17

That cat may be as dead as a rat. You can wage

Presenter36:21

In the infinite monkey game