Martin Lewis has confessed that he almost "gave up" his job after thinking that there was no place for financial journalism on TV. The 50-year-old founder of Money Saving Expert, who also fronts his own TV show, was chatting about his 20-year career during an interview on This Morning on Thursday, February 9.
Reflecting on the various setbacks he had in his early TV career, Martin told Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby: "I had lunch with my dad and I said, 'This is getting rid, I'm not sure this will work, I keep going to people and they say that money doesn't work on television and you can't make it work on television'."
Martin described how, at that point, he'd been asking ITV to appear on This Morning for "two years". He added: "I said to my dad that I was going to give it two months more and then I'd have to quit because I'm really struggling."
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"What would you have done?" asked Phillip and Martin replied: "I used to work in financial PR and that wasn't for me but I had to pay my bills. I was getting quite close to that point where I couldn't pay the bills."
Martin would eventually launch the successful MoneySavingExpert.com in 2003. He designed the site for just £100. In September 2012, he sold the website to the Moneysupermarket.com group for up to £87m but remained editor-in-chief.
The deal saw Martin receive £35m cash up front in addition to 22.1m shares in Moneysupermarket.com and £27m in future payments. This Morning airs on weekdays on ITV1 from 10am. For more showbiz and television stories get our newsletter here.
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