It pays not to watch

It seems my old friend, the dreadful "money saving expert" Martin Lewis, has again misplaced his sense of self-effacement.
Musing on his blog, the professional meanie blames "property porn shows" for punters overextending themselves and defaulting on their mortgages - before heartily congratulating himself on having the genius to foresee this entirely foreseeable pickle.
Still, Lewis should know how even the most brilliant financial telly presenters can sometimes stitch up the humble viewer. Thanks to his stupid campaign to help feckless people claim back money they have been rightly charged by banks, we are probably going to lose free banking. Solid work.

Footnote to Lewis: it is most unseemly to slag off rival (low grade) television genres when your own pisspoor show has been dumped.

It (no longer) Pays to Watch

Here's a surprising credit crunch victim. It Pays to Watch, the pisspoor money saving television show of professional meanie Martin Lewis, has been axed by Five just as Lewis and his team prepared for the filming of a fourth series.
"It's quite bizarre that the credit crunch programme’s been credit crunched [and] I’m sad to see such a worthwhile public service programme go," muses the rather self-regarding Lewis on his blog. "But I’ve been overcommitted for a long time and am relieved I may only need to work six days a week at the start of 2009."
Still, my man on the cutting room floor reckons that filming IPtW was not as time-consuming for Lewis as it could have been, chiefly because he insisted on all footage being shot close to his west London base. Anyway, Lewis was still believed to be trousering around £20k a series, so no doubt he'll now be looking for a few cuts of his own.