Test Match Special - Ashes Daily: View from the Boundary - Martin Lewis

Episode Date: July 11, 2023

Jonathan Agnew gets a different perspective on the Ashes from financial expert, campaigner and TV, Radio and 5 Live Podcast presenter Martin Lewis.Lewis discusses his love of cricket and parallels between fair play in the game and fair play in the world of money.

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He's a financial expert, TV radio presenter and campaigner, who's been nicknamed the Dumbledore of Debt. He created the website, money-saving expert 20 years ago. He's become a household name and face ever since, especially in these difficult financial times. For many, I think you all know it is by now. Martin Lewis, love to meet you. Thank you for having me.

It's very excited to be here. I'm just sorry that you haven't had a great journey up. No, two cancelled trains this morning on the way in. And yes, I do know about delay repay. I can claim my compensation, but it's still got me here late, but at least, well, not at least for everybody else, but at least I haven't actually missed any cricket so far. No, because this is, it's beautifully set up today.

I mean, if we can just get cleared away and get playing, you are going to see, hopefully, hopefully, a really good afternoon of cricket because the match is beautifully poised. You can't not have excitement at the moment the way the Sashes is going. I mean, it's absolutely incredible. The people I feel really sorry for at the moment are the programmers of Wimphiz. Because their algorithms are clearly set up. I mean, I watch the cricket with Wynnviz open.

That's how I work. Yeah, that's my type of cricket. That must be exhausting. Well, it's really, I was just fascinating because it swings so much. And clearly their algorithms were set up for the old style of test play. And that just does not work in this basball era. I mean, Wimphus is swinging quicker than Ben Stobey. at the moment. It's absolutely fantastic.

And I just don't know that anybody can judge where a match is going to go. They've both been so close. England have lost, but any team has been in the game all the way through it. It's absolutely fantastic stuff. And the great thing about the ashes is it grabs new people too, doesn't it? I mean, anybody who's never really been involved

in cricket before or ever watched or listened you can't help but be captivated by this. No, there's something about that friendly rivalry. You know, friendly? Well, it is. No, but let's be honest, that Australia is a country that is one of our closest allies that we have great friendships with. I've come here with one of my best mates today, standing at the back of the studio. And if I play a sport against him, I want to win so much more than against someone I don't know that well.

And I don't have, you know. Right, yes. And I think that's what the ashes is. You know, this is a country who, if we're in truth, if you look at, you know, geopolitics, we have absolutely everything in common with it. It's one of our best friends in the world, and that's why the rivalry is so fierce. because we can be honest, we can be ferocious, we can really go for them, because everybody knows ultimately there's a steadfastness between the two countries. Well, that's true, because you do shake hands afterwards, didn't you?

I mean, for everything that's happened on there. Everything happened last week at Lords. The players will still have a drink afterwards. No, shake hands, and that's what sport's all about, really. Well, it should be. I mean, we do sport as a proxy, so we don't have to have wars. It's a much better way to work it. If you want to fight each other, let's do it on the cricket pitch.

But, you know, with the bats and the balls in our hands. So I think it's quite cathartic in that way You get to cheer, have a bit of jingoism for your nation But then we all need to remember afterwards And you come here And what's wonderful about this compared to some other sports Is it doesn't matter if you're sitting next to somebody From the opposing nation

You might have a bit of banter and a bit of fun But you're not feeling threatened or there's going to be a problem And that's how sports should be short Yes, absolutely, it gets quite lively down here Have you been to headingly before? I haven't, it's my Old Trafford, the Oval Lords I've been to It's my first Headingley trip Right. Well, if you kind of double old Trafford at that big standard, that's what goes on over there.

And actually, well, you can see the Australia. And you're right. I mean, they are. They're sitting absolutely there. And there's two groups of them with, yeah, just on the next road from England supporters. So regardless of what happened last week, there's a bit of banter. Yeah. Well, banter's great. Banta's enjoyable and fun. I mean, we want rivalry. We want competition. We want all that to happen. But, I mean, the cricket, the beautiful thing about cricket is the spirit. of the game, and I know people have talked about what happened last week, whether it's rules,

but the spirit of the game is you sit next to each other, you're competitive, but you can shake hands afterwards and have a joke about it. Did you understand the spirit of the game? It seems to me that everybody has a different line, if you like, of what they think fair plays. I mean, and actually, in your job, in your life, I mean, you're talking about fair play. Aren't you most of the time? What are you considered to be fair plays? I started my career with loopholes, to be honest.

That was how I, when I first set money-saving expert up, it was about uncovering loopholes. and we used to do things that were within the rules but were against the spirit of the rules, right? But that was fine because we were against banks. That's because the rules were bad, presumably. Well, no, it's because what the rules were trying to do is suck people in with marketing. I mean, I'll give you an example, guys,

a bit arcane for this show. But I remember in the very early days, one of my favorites, there was a credit card company that if you shifted your debt to it would at zero percent, it would give you 5% of the debt you shifted back. So I wrote an article on how you could falsely construct £5,000 of debt.

Then you could shift that false $5,000. You just got debt when you didn't really need it. And you get 5% of that back. And then you would shift it back and you would do it twice. So you could make 500 quid in about a week from doing so. And that was what I started the website on. Now, the company weren't very happy because that was against the spirit of what they intended. But I didn't really care about it.

And so my interpretation of what happened, I mean, it all did balance out the catch that wasn't a catch. and then the stumping that was against the spirit of the game for me they balanced out and actually ultimately my view on all this is you have to make sure the rules are right and the rules of a game are whatever the rules of the game are at that moment and if they don't work and something like this comes up then you have to re-evaluate them or say well we're all going to have to play with them going forward that's a really good example that you give because the credit card company

was given the 5% would argue they're trying to do you a service a good thing a favour in a way, were they? Well, they were trying to make lots of money out. But yeah, but when they were argued, so therefore you were kind of, your spirit was not quite in spirit what they were trying to do. If I give you a, yes, but I mean,

I didn't really care what their story was. It was a credit card company. I'll give you another example. I remember, again, early days, and they don't do this anymore because they know these days, you know, my site, we email, what, 10 million people a week,

so we'd close them down pretty quickly. But in the early days, there was a bank who was paying people 100 quid to switch to it, but it was a terrible bank account. Right. And so I simply, I want everybody switch to it and then switch away from it the next day because it's awful,

but they'll pay you the 100 quid anyway. And we shut that bank down, that account down in three and a half hours, right? And the point of that, for me, was that was a campaigning thing. First of all, we could give people money, but second, we could get rid of a poor bank account where we're trying to get other people to go into it for. So that was actually using the loophole to do what I thought was good. But yes, the bank weren't particularly happy. No, I was just saying bankers and so.

terrified of you, aren't they? Well, I suppose the other way around is if we're recommending something, or me and my site, because it's the best on the market, we shift more traffic to it than anyone else. So if you've got the best deal on the market and it's good. Right. Now, there are four bank accounts paying you over 150 quid to switch to them at the moment. I always say to people, unless your bank's tickling your back and it's making you so wonderfully happy, you know, and gives you a massage that you love it, why not go and get paid 200 quid to

switch to another one? And the banks that are offering the 200 quid because they're effectively trying to legally bribe in new customers. Well, they like it because we shine a huge light of publicity on the idea that you can move across. So it's a love-hate relationship, is probably how I describe it. So how did cricket start for you then, Martin? So I was trying to remember this on the way up, as you would do.

My dad took me to an Ashes match at Old Trafford, because I grew up in Cheshire. I can't remember if it was 83 or 85. It was definitely Gatting and Gooch and Lamb era, and they were batting. Probably 1985. Possibly 95. It would have been. It could have been 83. Okay.

There was an amazing two not out scored in that match. Do you recall that or not? No, I'm starting to work out who it was, though. Well, it was an amazing innings that, I'd helped clinch the ashes. As I say, I really remember Gatting and Gooch and Lamb in that match. Right, yeah. They were the ones who really spring to mind as a 13-year-old watching at the time. It was the main feature. It actually made the highlights.

Did it? And was it done in two. Two singles? Or was it... It was done in two singles. And actually, one of them, and I was reminded this the other day, actually, was off the bat. It hit the middle stump very hard. Yes. Bales didn't come off. The ball just sort of squirted away somewhere nondescript.

And so we managed to get through for a singles. That was one of the two. And it must take a tremendous amount of skill to allow the ball to hit the stumps and not have the... And to have judged that the bales would not be coming off in that particular circumstance. They're working on it in the IPL at the moment. It's going to be a new shot. Yeah, it's absolutely fantastic. Unfortunately, you don't remember it.

I don't remember it. I probably wasn't there on that day, but it only went for one day. But I remember at the ashes, and I remember, you know, the crowd chanting Skippy, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo at the time and all that. And as a 13-year-old boy, it was just absolutely wonderful. The atmosphere was fantastic, getting engaged with the crowd, following the scores on the score sheet, and I had a little pad and I was noting down everything that went on. And as I mentioned, that's my, when it comes to cricketing Lewis's, I'm not a, Chris Lewis, I'm a Duckworth Lewis, you know.

That's sort of the way that I tend to like my cricket. It's a wonderful statistic sports, and I'm a numbers geek. So, you know, that's where I do like the data. I love the data. Well, you'll see some of Andy's in a minute. I mean, he has the best job. I think that's probably the best job in broadcasting. He's like to do that?

Does the stats, Annie does news quiz? I'm extremely jealous of those two roles. Well, he's a bit of pressure on him. Funny and could do it that way. There he is. Hello, nice to see you. I brought some Ruggah, Andy, which you will know, which many people won't know at the back. You better explain what it is.

Well, Rugglock is, so it's a Jewish pastry cake singles, but so imagine a quasson, and it comes from the same route as a quasson. Take a quassant, make it a lot dirtier, gorier with a lot more chocolate and a lot more calories, much stodgier

and single, and that's a Ruggolach. We don't need it. It's very good, but you know, it's Richard than Elon Musk. Well, come on to him in a minute. So, they're heavy. They are heavy, It was going well. I'm looking at the back, yeah. Well, Andy's, no doubt, had it really.

So it is, that is remarkable. Right. Well, thank you for actually, Rogelach, is it? Yeah, well, listen, as anything which is a sort of transliteration, there's about 1,700 ways to say it. And especially as it's a Jewish thing, that means you put two Jews in the room, and they'll have at least three different ways and argue about which one is wrong.

We've got, okay, fair enough. So that game you were talking about, actually, because, yeah, I did play that game. I'd work that out. Yeah, and it was actually, it wasn't a great man. because it rained a lot and was very windy. I don't know if you remember that or not, and it was quite a dull.

I don't think a bit inspirational game is what I'm saying. But if you were there for, you had a dry day. For me, it was very excited. We grew up, you know, I grew up in the middle of the Cheshire countryside. Right. And so, I mean, we're coming into Manchester. That's exciting in its own right. The ground was packed.

We're at a sporting event, which is not something that I'd particularly done. Just to be there and to be there with my dad, I mean, I still remember it. I still remember it. And it was, you know, I wanted my dad to come here today. Unfortunately, he's not that... Travelling's a bit more difficult, so he couldn't make it, to sort of reverse that way.

But in spirit, he's here today as my way of getting him to come back. So he was a degree... I mean, it usually tends to be, doesn't it? That one or both parents are into a sport, whichever it may be, and that gets handed down to the child. I think, you know, we were always...

We always watched most sports, and that came across. The three sports I like, and I like watching. I like my cricket. I like my golf. Oh, yes. And athletics.

which was always the other one for me. I'm not really that into the football. You know, I support my football team and I check whether they win or lose, but I don't go that often. But the cricket is something that I have on the radio or have on the telly,

certainly whenever England are playing and playing in the right time zone. Whenever I can. Did you play, don't know, did your dad encourage you? We're in the garden, playing with a tennis sport? I have, sporting skills and me, they do not go that well together.

And that ball's very hard. And I'm a physical coward. It was never going to be. I mean, you hit the odd ball, tennis ball out there and sat there and pretended to do all that. But I never played cricket properly at school or anything. Yeah. It doesn't really matter, though, does it? As you mentioned, because something like a sport-like cricket does have so many other things going for it,

like the data, like being a scorer, like being an umpire, like just sitting quietly in a stand and just enjoying what's going on. I mean, you can love cricket without actually playing it yourself. And I think that the huge range of modern versions of the game, you know, from the 100 up to a test match. They all offer you something slightly different depending on the mood that you're in. I mean, we have this weird thing now

where a test match has become like 100, which is fantastic and activated to watch. But still, the old strategic chess game of the test match still has a sort of magic that just as we're walking from the station, there was an Italian guy who was there with his South African friend. And he didn't know what cricket was.

And we were walking next to them, trying to explain what cricket was to him. Where do you start? I mean, and ultimately, it's a bat and ball game where you don't want to hit the three wooden things at the back and if you get caught out you're out and you've got to run and which is so there's a baseball element to it that you can enjoy but actually this type of test for somebody's never seen cricket before will be great you know far more than the old chess match version but I still it all works

it all works and it depends on your mood and it can change your mood when you're watching and what I love about cricket is that you can introduce kids to just the notion of of hitting a ball with a bat yeah that's all it takes and you run I mean it's such a simple thing people are alarmed about how complicated cricket can be but actually the basics of it are so simple hit a ball and run you know and that's all reason kids latch on to it so quickly well I've played with my little girl

and she likes to hit the ball and clearly we're not using a cricket ball when we do it she's 10 and it's not happening and she's you know she's inherited her parent's sporting ability so we're definitely not going to be throwing a fast ball at her but yeah hitting the ball with the bat running catching all of the basic elements that you need in bat and ball skills it's all there And it's, I think, you know, we just have to be careful in this country that we don't lose our cricket.

Yes. I do worry, you know, the dominance of football that is out there, that the media and the pounds that are being pushed into pumping football in forms of marketing out there. Cricket is still a wonderful English sport that we need to make sure thrives and survives. I walked through the Regents part the other day and I saw three cricket nets. And I just remember thinking it's been quite a while since I've seen cricket nets anywhere. It does worry me slightly the future of the game on that. Yeah, it does feel a bit swamp. I started talking to

Garas South Go he was sitting there on the first day and I felt I rather missed out because I had never played football at school which is such a national conversation isn't it? And you're right, I mean and yet you look at this, you look at a packed out heading you for every day

and it just takes something like the ashes to put cricket back on that front page again. Well, Ben Stokes, I mean he's the best thing for English cricket that we've had for at least a decade you know, he's a proper schoolboy hero, isn't he? I'm sure if I were 14, 15 now I'd go ahead of my eyes closed, of being Ben Stokes and hitting the sixes

and being the England captain winning it. And it's amazing to be the player he is and to captain the team, which hasn't always worked with his type of players in the past. And what's really interesting about that is the way that he enthuses the rest of the team. And I think that's a really interesting trio of skills. He's playing with himself as captain

and he's taking everyone with him. And I think that's something that we need to grasp hold of. I mean, the scores that he's had in the last couple of matches and the way that he's done it, you know, the brilliant, passionate aggression, it's addictive to watch. It's been very bad for man I'm trying to work and write something because it's on and, you know, and you're just getting totally torn away. You can't take your eyes off of him.

It's fantastic. It is, and you'd like the way that they are playing now. I mean, do you think that's attractive to, you know, this way call it basketball, call it whatever you like. It'd be nice if we're winning. Yes, but actually that's the line, isn't it? I mean, you can entertain, but surely you've also got to win. And being entertaining losers.

I wonder how long people will carry that. So as an in-expert cricket watcher without any of the specialty, there's many great cricketers sitting in this room, so I need to be careful. My instinct is you feel I'd just like them to take it off 10%. I still want Bazbole, but I'd like slightly 10% less. 10%? Yeah, and I'd like them to come out for three or four overs and get their game going before they really start to slog it

and just get their eye in. Because this is the point, we love the entertainment. Or I shouldn't say we, I can only. speak for myself. I love the entertainment but I really would like to see England win as well. Yes. Well I think that's probably what most people would be considered to be the right balance. Do you take your daughter along to games? Do you take no to

the 100? I mean the reason we know or got to know that you were into cricket really was because you, I think, did your podcast from Lords, didn't you? I did so... The Ashes Test Man. So I presented Good Morning Britain last week and a friend had invited me to the cricket with him and I had my Radio 5 live show which we turn into a podcast afterwards

and I politely got in touch with five live and said, would you mind if I did it from Lord because otherwise I'm going to miss an hour of play either side going home and back and doing that type of stuff and they said yes so I did it from the commentary box there which was wonderful I mean probably doing a you know a show about how to save money sitting in sitting in the commentary box the Five Life studio so that was great I have taken my daughter to the hundred she absolutely loved it oh that's good she had really good fun at the hundred we took her there and we took her to Lord's to see it and she she were right up in the tops and you know she doesn't

get all the nuances of the game but you don't need to in the hundred no and she loved it What does she like about it? I think she liked that mix of entertainment. She liked the music pumping and people running and everybody cheering and just, you know, it's got a bit of a pop event to it. Yes. And I think when you're 10,

or I think she was nine when we took her, and she just liked that frision of excitement that comes from being in a large crowd. And then the sport sort of seeps in, I think, on the secondary level when you're going to sit at the first time. She wants to go again. She does. Okay, well, that's good.

And do you see her therefore getting more interested in cricket as a whole because of that? Or is kind of that, the hundred cricket completely different to what we're hopefully going to see this afternoon? I mean, it's very difficult with the 10-year-old to know what they're going to do because it changes week by week and there's a lot of other competing things out there. My hope is, at a very minimum, it will give her a basic understanding of cricket so that if there's something excited and I'm watching or listening to it, and I can know, because my wife has no interest whatsoever.

I'm right. I just said that I actually at least have somebody in the house I can pull over and explain what's going on and she might sit and watch it with me for 10, 20 minutes. Yes. That's my limited ambition, but that's my ambition. The TMS podcast. Take the ashes with you this summer. Hear every ball. Live on BBC Sounds.

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And, you know, you are our guardian angel there. And how do you cope with that? Not brilliantly well. Right. It is certainly since the start of the pandemic. You know, we've had the pandemic and a cost of living crisis. at the point I was hoping to take my foot off the gas in my career a little bit.

It hasn't gone that well, I'll be honest with you. I find it quite stressful. I mean, look, people are having a really hard time out there. And I get a lot of messages from a lot of people in absolutely desperate situations. And the truth is, I think, the big change over the last four or five years, I tended to have an answer in the past.

And it's getting more difficult for people at the bottom end. And that impotency to be able to help or suggest anything, I find very difficult. You know, you look at the stats. I don't want to depress people when they're having a fun day. But if you look at over 50% of people who go to citizens' advice for help now, and those are people, you know, struggling with their debts or struggling with their finances. After citizens' advice have given them one-on-one help to reduce their expenditure, over 50% are still deficit budgeting.

In other words, their minimum expenditure is still more. than their income. Now, there is nothing in the world, even a money-saving expert can do to fix that. And that's the, at the bottom end of society, that's probably why I've been campaigning far harder over the last few years, because I realize that, you know, money management still works for many people, and it's great, and you can save lots of money, and it helps many, but there's a whole chunk of society now who will be on that. And that's why we just have to look at how we get people through this. And I've, you know, on a personal basis, nothing like the people who are struggling, it's pretty hard to have that rammed at you day after day after day

and to be seeing what's going on and feeling that people look because of the media profile that I have you know they feel like it's I mean I've had people walk up to me in the street and I had one woman burst into tears telling me I'd been sent by God to help her and I couldn't help her and that's quite a distressing thing to deal with if I'm really honest with this because you feel like she's just she thought it was all going to be magically okay because by coincidence we happen to be in the same place at the same time. But it isn't that easy and there isn't a magic one.

That's really quite traumatic, isn't it? It is quite traumatic. And, you know, we go on at the moment and we're in, we've got the mortgage crisis going on right now, which is very difficult for a relatively small number of part of society. And the reason I say that is because, sorry, if you look at it, if we're honest, we put interest rates up to squeeze borrowers. It's not an accident that borrowers,

are being squeezed right now. It's not some byproduct. It is the deliberate policy. That's what the Bank of England is putting interest rates up to do. Well, a third of the country own outright, and a third of the country rent, although they are hit by this, a third of the country have mortgages. Of the third of the country have mortgages, many are on long-term fixed rates. So if you actually look at the number of people, that policy has to squeeze in order for it to work on the economy, you have to squeeze them until the pips come out, and those people are hurting. But that is a deliberate policy. And this is on the back of the end. energy crisis where energy bills are still

double what they were a year ago. And this is on the back of the pandemic where many people catastrophes their finances and were caught out without any of the financial help there. And that is, you know, when you look at it from my perspective, that's what you're dealing with in many days. It's not the easiest thing. No.

I'm quite depressing, I'd have thought. I mean, how do you... I'm bouncing out of bed every morning and go to work. Well, I don't sometimes. I sometimes find it really quite a difficult thing to and quite traumatic. And then you realize, you know, I feel my work has been incredibly generous to me over the years. I have had success beyond anything I could have ever dreamed of.

And I think, and hopefully this isn't self-aggrandizing. But by pure fluke, I am in a position where if I stopped doing this, I don't see anybody else stepping in to do it. There wasn't anyone before. Just by chance I happened to be, you know, in the right place, at the right time. All the right things happened to me to have. to have broken out of the money genre and to have this level

where I can pick up the phone to politicians and I will get the phone answered and I can push and campaigning to do. And I think there's a responsibility to do that if you've been successful, you have to have a responsibility to give back. But, you know, I would far prefer to be watching the cricket every day

and playing a little bit of golf at this stage. But I don't feel that's appropriate for me to do right now. You're driven by it, don't you? I mean, you're a campaigner and you do wear that responsibility. I do. I do. And I am a campaigner. And, you know, the more I realize that those campaigns work, the more I feel obligated to do them. And it's interesting. I get people very upset with me that I

haven't taken on one campaign or the other. And sometimes I just want to go, I can't. I can't, you know, not publicly funded service where I have unlimited amounts of time. And you get thrown into things sometimes that, you know, I'm doing the scam campaign that I've been doing for six years, which I never wanted to do. But I have so many scams out there with my face on that I had no other choice that to get involved into fighting the scans and the things that are going on and all that it's not very pleasant it doesn't you know and some people sometimes you know profit of doom it's quite difficult when you have to tell people that if you think things are bad now it's going to get worse which is how it's been for the last couple of years but i do it based on data not out of

instinct yes and do you out of policy i do you keep politics out of it a government policy in particular or do you do you simply look at a situation that has been presented to you by by people who who come to you for help and just take us on an apolitical line or do you find this of actually getting into government policy? I try as best as I can to take an apolitical line, but I also get involved in government policy. So I am strictly politically political and neutral.

I speak to all the major parties and I have meetings with the major parties and I have meetings with people on all sides. When I take a policy line, I mean, probably the most difficult was last summer on the energy crisis where I felt, you know, we were going to get a state over winter where energy bills were going to be typically

four thousand four hundred pounds from eight hundred pounds and that was just going to absolutely kill the finances of most people on lower and middle incomes and so i was calling out again i was using the horrible phrase but the true phrase people will make a choice between heating and eating and people will die unless we do it and we had that coinciding with the conservative party leadership campaign where we had a zombie government with nobody in power and nobody taking any decisions. And so I felt I had to go more political than I ever had before. I'm always very careful.

I talk about the policy and what needs to happen. I don't go playing one party off against another. I don't do any of that basis. I don't attack. You know, I might argue against the policies of the government at the time, but that's the government, not the Conservative or Labour Party who was ever in there. But it's a very fine line to tread. And in the end, we did get intervention,

so bills were only just over double. rather than quadruple, which is where they would have been without the government-based intervention. But it isn't easy. I try and stay as neutral as I can and just focus on the individual issues. Yeah. And you're an expert in what you do.

Do you encounter, I don't know, very influential politicians in the exchequer or maybe who actually perhaps aren't as knowledgeable in the experience as you are and they're the ones who are actually handling the policy? Treasury tends to be pretty good. And people in Treasury ministers tend to know what they're talking about, certainly.

and they do tend to listen and as a campaigner it's always funny because people get annoyed with you you know, when you campaign hard for something and then they do it and then what I always do then is I say thank you and then you get attack for people saying how can you thank them when they do?

And well because if you're campaigning and asking someone to do something and it does it and you don't give them a little bit of reward when they do it you don't get another one you don't get a win again but I mean I remember look

student finance is one of my specialties and we had a number of different universities ministers over the years. And some of them, a couple of them knew about student finance when I met them earlier. A couple of them didn't and try to pretend they do when you're in a private meeting with them. And you're sitting there and you're going,

you haven't got a clue how this works. And then better than that, I remember one, who I got in the meeting, and he or she had been in power for not very long. And they said, look, why don't we pretend I don't know any. And would you explain to me how it works from your perspective? That's a good way of phrasing it. And I did.

Yes. And I thought, you know what? If you don't know anything, at least you're asking. Because student finance doesn't work the way most people think it does. It doesn't work like a debt. It's more like a form of taxation. And you have to start understanding that before it works. But I mean, it's pretty depressing.

Our form of, you know, government is adversarial, which I always find really difficult. We have a political system that pits people a bit like a cricket match, cricket match, opposite each other in the comments. And so when one party takes up the other party's suggestions, the party who came up with it in the first place doesn't say, great, we're all working together and we all agree on this. They attack them for it. When a party does a U-turn, now look, I run a website, I run a charity, sometimes we try stuff, it doesn't work, and we say, let's not do it anymore, it was a worthwhile experiment. But in politics, you do a U-turn,

you've done the worst thing either. That stops innovation, that stops people trying to do stuff. And so we have this adversarial system where you can't change your mind, you have party unity that means politicians are by definition liars because even if they disagree in cabinet, they then have to come out and say what they don't believe in it. So of course their lies in the first place. And then as soon as someone starts to understand

what they're doing in a department, they get shifted and moved, so they never build any expertise and people wonder why we have such poor government. Could it change? I mean, what would it take for you to have a sort of a, a system that would work. Well, I mean, I personally will never get involved in politics.

My mental health isn't robust enough. I'd not do it to my family. And I know people often say, why don't you? I wouldn't do it, and I won't be doing it. I won't get involved in party politics anyway. It's very difficult because there is no perfect system of government. I was disappointed that the coalition wasn't more popular, not because of the parties involved in the coalition,

but because I actually thought in some ways to have two parties who would have to go into a room and sit there together to negotiate something they both agreed on to make it work was far better than throwing stuff throwing brickbacks each other in commons to make things go that forward.

So a broader debate, basically. A broader debate, I mean, look, if you take some of the most important issues in our society right now, let's take, sorry, I hope this isn't too boring, but... If you take social care, social care is a monumental issue in our society

that there have been suggestions and papers of how we get social care to work, care for people, once they get into their old age. For decades, there have been papers written, but nothing is done. The truth is you cannot have a short-term governmental policy on social care. We need a policy for the next 20 or 30 years. Same on pensions. How do you do that? We need a broad-based coalition from all the governing parties of a way to work it forward so we can have consistency and development over the next 20, 30 years, rather than them constantly trying to dotize, cross-tees,

push it around the room in order to get short-term political advantage, which is exactly what happens. And so actually, I would like to see more grown-up politics where it is not bad for parties to sit and agree that they will both follow the same policy over the long-term because it needs a form of long-term investment and structure in the way we work our society. I can hear cheering, breaking out, even in the room here, actually. But it won't happen, and it won't happen

because of short-term electoral advantage because politics is a more aggressive game than the ashes. Right? And, you know, and so they're not going to be an agreement because if they can get a slide dig in and get a poke and do a bit of hassling of each other, they will do so, especially as you move towards an election and our electoral cycle doesn't work. And so we have less trust in politics than we've ever had before. What's interesting from my perspective, though, is when I go and meet individual politicians on all sides and they're talking honestly and openly, people will be surprised to hear the vast majority, want to improve the country, are doing it for the right reasons, and are really trying to make things work, which is why I think the system and our structure, you know, of the way that we have politics working is so devastatingly poor. Do you live on a bit of a knife edge?

I mean, you know, Martin Lewis files his tax bill later or something. I mean, you are the biggest sitting duck in the country just for the slightest tabloid story about anything that you do that could possibly chip away at this, this reputation that you have. I'm professionally paranoid to an extreme level that often people I work with find difficult. You know, when I do my own finances,

my brief to my accountant that I work with is we will not claim anything unless it's actually written in the rules and says you can claim this. It's just not worth it for me for exactly the reasons. I always remember, you know, if you want to go to the arcane level, I think we had a deal on our website

and we get affiliate links. We never write, we will only tell you what's best, but if it's best and then we can find a way to be paid for it. That's how my staff are paid. There's a large staff on track. That's that work. We had one deal. I can't remember.

It was with a telecoms provider. And you could get, claim, I'm semi making up the exact numbers. You could claim £100 back from them in this deal. And we'd negotiated an extra £30 for our users. Now the £30 was paid automatically, the £100 you had to claim after three weeks. And I then found out that if people didn't claim, we got a cut of the 100 pounds.

And I found out that was a deal. And as soon as I heard this, I said to the team, we can't take that. And I said, because people think were incentivized to get people not to claim. And so we went to them and said, we don't want that money. We cannot do the deal.

And they were like, well, no one will know. I'm like, it doesn't matter. Even for me to know is too much. Even if we do everything right to make people claim, the fact that we were being incentivized, for people to have a bad action cannot happen. And so I sit there and my team, I sometimes, because they just want an easy life sometimes.

You want to get things out and get it done and do the right thing for people. We always try and do, you know, the first rule of the website is in the editorial code is we must always do what's in our users' interest ahead of our own. That's the number one when I sold the website in 2012. That's part of the legally binding contract

of the way it has to operate. But the level of paranoia I have on that is pretty extreme. There must be such scrutiny. I mean, did you feel it from outside? You know, it's not that much. The scrutiny comes from the users, but the internal scrutiny is what's more. We never let a chink in.

You know, we must always be as far as we possibly can, because there will always be somebody who wants to have a go, and people will try and have a go. We must always try and do what's right, but we're not perfect. We've got things wrong, because we're human beings like everybody else, and just like, you know,

the best batters in the world can't go out on that pitch and score a century every time. Occasionally, you lose a bit of concentration, or it goes wrong, and aim for perfection. And my team, I drive the nuts that when new members of staff come on board and they're talking about writing an article, I always give them a talk that says, you will never send me an article that I don't change.

You need to understand that is how I operate. Partly my learning mechanism and partly iterative. And sometimes we'll do something in my weekly email and we'll be taking what was written a year ago on a subject and updating the products. And my team will say, here we go, we've got it. And I'll go through it and say it's not good enough. And they go, ha ha, you wrote it. And I go, yeah, and it's not good enough.

Because I believe in constant, iterative pushing to be towards perfection. And I can do it now better than I could do a year ago. And in a year's time, I'll have learnt more and I can do it better than now. And I do drive them absolutely crackers with that. I think you're quite exhausting as a boss, aren't you? Yeah, I am. And during the pandemic, I have an editor-in-chief who runs it day-to-day. I'm chair, I oversee.

And he came at one point because I was in the pandemic. I was sitting at home, as you were, every day. and I was obsessed with the financial help that was being given, trying to feed through to the government to make sure that the schemes work well and trying to free through to the public to make sure that they understood what they were eligible for. And I mean, for months and months, I was just absolutely constantly focused about the way that it worked. And then he came to me at one stage, and he just said, Martin, and there's 60 people on my editorial team, 50 people that work with,

he says, you just have to let up, they can't cope. Because it's like I'm a spider pushing out. I want to know this from you and I want to know this from you and you've got to bring it all in and we've got to get it right. And he said, you just have to take your foot off. It was after about four or five months, the team can't cope. It's too much they're exhausted. Tell me about the stuff in the papers yesterday, Martin,

because I'm trying to remember the name of that program, that series that I watched on the BBC, I think it was. The capture. That was it, which was extraordinary. And it was the first I'd really heard about AI. And there it was the doctoring of CCTV and so on. It really got a bit bewildering in the end. And it's something that's really quite grown, certainly my little world to send,

much more aware of it. And there's you yesterday, and I'm looking at you now. This is the real me. Well, I just want to check, because I looked about an hour ago at a film of you talking to me and promoting something that, well, it looked like you, and it sounded like you, and you were clearly promoting something that you don't want to promote. No, well, I've been the face of scam adverts for the last six years. You know, I sued Facebook in 2018 over it and settled in 2019 for three million pounds to set up Citizens Advice Scam Action and a scam ads reporting button.

And it hasn't stopped. You know, it's Facebook, it's Twitter, it's Instagram, it's all of them. And we need things to change. But what happened this week is a very scary next step. So the adverts in the past have always been static images with, you know, a slogan and then they'd lead you to a fake BBC or a fake Daily Mirror website. and then what these scammers do is all they want is you to call them. And when they call them, it's very subtle. They say, we want a 250 pound investment from you.

So you invest 250 pounds with me. And then I've got this fake trading platform, which I give you a login for in some cases. And then you go log in and look, your £250, $450, $5.50, $1,000. You've now got £1,000. And then I call you up and go and say, look, it's going well, isn't it? Do you want to put some more money in? And you put more money in because it's going well, isn't it? And then, you know, you've invested $1,000 and $2,000.

but you've got six, seven thousand worth. And look, I've had people, and my face is the reason some of people have done that. Trust again. And we've had people lose over £100,000. Oh. We have, I mean, tens, if not hundreds of millions of pounds have been lost to this, and it's not just me.

Deppermiedon has it. You know, Richard Branson has it. Elon Musk has it. And those have been static adverts. And we have an epidemic of scam and scam adverts and fraud in this country. But what happened this week was the first, I've seen with anyone, I'm not, there may have been somewhere else, and definitely the first

of me, was a deep fake AI adverts. So this advert is audio and video of me. It's you. It looks like you. The lips are slightly out of sync, but you have on Zoom some time. As my friend said to me on the way in, he said, it's a little bit posher than you. You'll probably be there in 20 years. Right. And I think it is a tiny bit posher. I think people who are looking for this would know that it was a deep fake and would understand that it was a deep fake, but the public wouldn't. So you now, and it will not be long before

the conversation that we are having, we are a year away, that this conversation and a perfect replica of this conversation under AI would be us talking about an investment scheme that everybody had to get involved in. How have they done it then? How am I looking at that screen today? This is thinking that's you promoting something that you work.

We don't know the technology, but we presume it's AI and it's AI that will be doing this. And listen, AI could have lots of good uses. You never know. In the future, we might see an AI critic cricket match between Stokes's England and Don Bradman's Australia, and we'd be able to watch that, and that would be entertaining. But the problem is we need to make sure that this is regulated and moved in the right way. And unfortunately, even though it's been six years that I've been shouting about these scam adverts that are, and it's worth remembering with

scams. And especially for elderly and vulnerable people, when they are scammed, it isn't just their financial lives they lose. Their self-esteem, is absolutely destroyed. It has a huge impact on people's mental health and a really big impact on people's mental health. It isn't just a financial crime. And we have had for years, there's no one policing it effectively. The number of arrests for fraud, even when you know who it is, it's trivial. The social media companies, they are paid to promote these adverts and their policing of it has been derisory. I've been involved in calling. We finally got the government to agree to put it into this new online safety bill, which means that scam adverts will be part

of that. But that's now delayed generally because of long discussions over, you know, whether WhatsApp should be encrypted or not encrypted, because what we really wanted is just a scam advert bill. And there's an online advertising program that's meant to happen, but we still don't know when that's coming out. And so for six years, we've effectively had an anarchic system on our internet, where big tech is paid to promote scams. Vulnerable and non-volveillance. vulnerable people and clever, you know, really solicitors, accountants, people have all been scammed by these type of frauds over the last six years, are losing money with an absolutely unpoliced anarchic system. And it shouldn't have happened. Do you see tomorrow, yesterday's

being a bit of a landmark? Yes. The fact that there has now been a fully functioning video of you looking at us and apparently talking to us. Is that going to be a bit of a watershed moment? Yeah, well, listen, my wife's a tech journalist and one of her specialties is a, and we've sat there at discussing me. I've been waiting for this in a way. Technology is improving at such a pace. It is going to be very difficult to be able to distinguish it. They're talking about putting watermarks on tech so you'd be able to know it. But ultimately, the problem that we have is the big tech firms make money from having easy advertising. I mean, I wouldn't say they make money specifically from having scams, but they do get

paid to do scams. But their whole platform is anyone can advertise and anyone can advertise with ease. and that simply you can't do that television and newspaper can't have that they're pre-veting and when I have and I have to be very careful because of legal positions I remember meeting one big technology company very very big technology company

right and I sat in a room and a private meeting where they had an hour-long presentation prepared for me to explain why it was technologically difficult for them to stop scam adverts any scam adverts but scam adverts with my face in and do remember I don't ever do advertising. So my answer is, if there's an advert with me

in, it's a fake. It's pretty binary. And they had this hour-long presentation and after two or three minutes I said, can you stop? I said, stop. Stop. Why? I said, because you have framed this as there needs to be a technological solution.

I need there to be a solution. If all you're going to do is tell me for the next hour, why? Because they're using Cyrillic A, Cyrillic A's in my name, you might not spot it's my name. I don't give a monkeys. All this is is a functionality of your profits. And if you cannot police your adverts and you cannot protect vulnerable people from being scammed, then pre-vet them and pay human beings to pre-vet them.

Do not frame this as technology. And I'm not interested in hearing any more about the technological problems. Because ultimately, scam adverts are a function of profitability. And so they may have to lose money by policing them properly. But when you are a multi-billion pound international company, you can afford to do that. Now, let's look out here, Martin, before we wrap us up, because you need some lunch you've been on. But the bad news is out there that the umbrellas are up again. I just hope, I do hope you get to see. Me too. See, you saw Johnny Berstow somewhere, didn't it? Did you see Johnny Berstro off the World Cup or something, in a taxi with his meddle on or something? I did. I was walking past Lords, and I saw a guy with him. I know who that is. And it was Johnny

Bearstow just getting into a taxi now is unreasonably excited. But it's funny, because in my world, obviously, you meet a lot of famous people, but I do, you know, sports stars. What about sport? Well, Johnny Beirstow after the World Cup. Michael Johnson, the athlete is always one for me. I've ever been in the room with Michael Johnson. I'm a bit like, oh, I've known what I'd say to Michael Johnson?

It's Michael Johnson. What would I possibly say? So, I mean, there's something. For me, it's sports stars, especially sports. Bigger than what you think. I mean, Glenn McGrath silenced my pub when he came at Easter because I say, I thought Glenn McGraths or six foot two or something. He came in, or bent over.

I mean, I think a sportsman are, I think, the professionals. I went to the tennis once, and I saw Maria Sharapova. She was so much bigger. I mean, you know, Glenn looks quite similar, really, in many ways. I wouldn't put him in a mirror Sharapover in the same sentence, if I'm honest. I want something better than that. What's wrong with cool Jonathan Pye? It's really boring.

Okay, so let's all do a brain fart. Actually, what about that? Jonathan Pye's brain fart. It's hilarious. Jonathan Pye, off my chest. Off my chest. Doing the fat, chewing the pie. Chewing the cud.

Cud? The title for my new phone-in show is Jonathan Pye choose his own sick. I'm just spit-balling. Let's just spit ball. Jonathan Pye spits balls. Should we just stick with cool Jonathan Pye? Yes.

Call Jonathan Pye. Listen first on BBC Sounds.