The broadcaster and financial expert started out searching for cut-price credit card deals. But with ‘shocking’ levels of poverty he has become a champion for the vulnerable – and he wants those in power to act
Martin Lewis is in his happy place. The keen walker is sitting in an outdoor cafe in a London park he loves, and, a couple of days shy of his 50th birthday, is a contented family man who assiduously expunges any swearing from the record in case his nine-year-old daughter happens to read this piece.
When he left a postgraduate journalism degree in Cardiff more than 20 years ago, he had a seemingly simple idea: “I always wanted to be the person on This Morning talking about money. When you watch something like that,” he says, “you see the stylists and you see the hairdressers and you see the cooks and you see the psychiatrists, you see all of these people and they talk about changing people’s lives. Well, you can’t do any of that without money.” It’s an idea that has gained him great wealth – the Sunday Times rich list puts it at £123m, mainly due to the sale of his comparison website moneysupermarket.com, which he built in the early 00s for £100. But also household-name status and, more recently, adulation.
