Martin’s Blog…

After opening my in-box to a number of e-mails about it, I’ve just read an article in the Guardian about the proposed new consumer advocate the government wants to appoint.

Most were people asking “is it you?”, “are you going to do it?” Well no. It’s the first I’ve heard of it. If there was a consultation, it didn’t come to MSE Towers.

Having read the piece though I understand the questions… here’s few of the Guardian’s salient points:

• A high-profile national “consumer champion” is to be appointed by the government to help people get their money back when things go wrong and fight for redress over personal finance problems such as unauthorised overdraft charges.

• Asked whether the advocate would have a high media profile, sitting regularly on the GMTV sofa, for example, consumer affairs minister Kevin Brennan said: “Clearly it should be someone who should have a public face, although I don’t think we want to pre-judge an individual and what kind of skills we would want them to have.” A “competitive” salary is being offered, and the successful applicant is expected to be in the job early next year.

• Brennan said the appointment would represent a significant step forward for consumer rights: “This is all about helping people to get their money back.

Now, while there are some differences, it pretty much describes the work that the MSE team, our forum, users and I do everyday and have done for many years.

With over 6m bank charges reclaiming letters downloaded, and millions more letters and reclaims on council tax, PPI, mortgage reclaiming, setting off help, this is what MSE is all about.

Does the government think it can appoint an advocate and BINGO, there you go, it’s all done. Or actually is it more likely that, as another branch of officialdom, the aim will simply be to look as if something’s being done.

In the three years of the bank charges campaign NOT ONCE has Gordon Brown or the government made a statement on it. Recently, in my News of the World column, I asked the Prime Minister to look at setting off, and the nightmare it causes – no response.

In the past, the PM has publically told everyone to pay energy by direct debit, yet failed to respond to the bigger issue of massive over billing, which kills the concept for many, and the lack of rights we have (see fight energy direct debits). And I could go on and on about lack of response.

Will a government appointed consumer advocate solve this? Organisations like MSE, Consumer Action Group, Consumer Focus, programmes like Money Box and others have been collectively doing it, both in high profile media and in public policy.

Even Which? has said: ““The jury is out on the creation of the role of consumer advocate, for the devil is in the detail. It will be interesting to see how the role will fit in with the organisations and roles that already exist.”

Frankly, what we really need is some bloody government response on the issues. As you can probably tell, I read this announcement with a huge level of frustration that instead of solving the problems head on, this seems to be a policy focused on looking like something’s being done, rather than actually doing it.

Comment and Discuss.

There’s a worrying possibility that the FSA is about to kill off independent financial advice in the UK for all but the wealthy. I do hope I’m wrong.

It’s just confirmed plans of its Retail Distribution Review which, in a nutshell, means from 2012 Independent Financial Advisers will have to charge a fee rather than simply take their cash from commission.

Its valiant aim is to get rid of ‘commission bias’, where some IFAs are more prone to recommend products that give them higher commission.

Therefore, it may surprise you that I’m worried it’s a bad move, especially as most personal finance journalists tend to be in favour. I should note, this isn’t a core subject for me, so I’ve only read summaries of the proposals rather than word for word, but the gist is plain…

Setting the scene.

For those who don’t know, let me explain how it already works. This is taken from my financial advice guide, so you’ll be unsurprised to see the viewpoint I took when writing that starts to draw you along the path of this argument.

IFAs are… “paid in two ways, by fees or commission, and by law they are required to give you the option of either. While most journalists are very pro-fees and berate commission-based advisers, I believe both systems have merits.

• Fees. Here they charge a flat hourly fee for their advice. Standard fees range from £75 to £250 per hour depending on where you live and what kind of advice you need. Make sure you ask in advance and compare costs.

  The great advantage of fees-based advice is there’s less incentive for advisers to bias their advice according to how much commission they’ll make, as they should pay any commission earned back to you – either in the form of a rebate or a boost to any plan (always ask and check this is happening).

  Plus, if you’re making a large investment or pension, then you’re definitely better off paying a fixed fee rather than commission, as commission increases with the size of the investment.

• Commission. Advisers paid commission may seem to be giving advice for free, but over the long run they tend to make more money this way than by charging a fee upfront. Some plans can be extremely profitable and will make advisers a large amount of money. As an example, a typical upfront commission paid on a £30 a month level term life assurance policy for 25 years would be £600.

  The proof that commission impacts advice is that companies deliberately market increased commission rates to IFAs. If advice was never biased, then the rate of commission wouldn’t make any difference, yet product providers know that if they up the commission rate, they’re more frequently recommended.

  However, the commission route still has its merits. While there will be some bias, the legal obligation to give good advice means advisers tend to tweak at the fringes rather than give downright poor information. And the big advantage is that as you won’t need to stump up the cash each time, you’ll be less scared to seek help when needed; thus will continue to get retained advice. “

What’s the problem?

I’m not convinced most people will want to pay for advice. The commission route has the advantage that you don’t pay a fee each and every time you want information; you can go without the worry of laying out cash.

The advent of fee-only is likely to mean fewer people seeking advice and those that do may go for it less often to keep the fee down.

While in principle I support the FSA’s stance, in practice, I think it could be a nightmare from which we may not recover. I think I prefer the idea of people not getting perfect advice due to slight commission bias, than not getting advice at all.

Of course, it is also talking about systems whereby the commission is recouped up to a set fee, which is better – but still psychologically there is the danger here that people don’t want to pay an hourly fee in any system – it just looks too expensive.

The Real Nail in the Coffin.

What I find most galling though is that bank-based advisers – those primarily responsible for PPI misselling, endowment misselling, investment misselling and generally poor advice all round are still to be allowed to be remunerated based on the number of sales.

So bank advice, which as they can only look at a limited number of products, will become known as “restricted advice” (though it’s often far closer to sales tactics than advice) will be free and commission remunerated; yet you’re going to have to pay a fee to get a cross-market comparison. This seems to me a bias in totally the wrong direction.

Comment and Discuss.

This is quite a staggering story – I’d love to know where your sympathies lie!

A friend texted to say he was outraged with his bank, and could I help. Normally I tend to say check the website, but he said this one was different, so I asked him to send me a brief email.

His complaint.

Since 2000 he’s had a packaged current account, one where you pay a fee each month. Originally it was for £6 a month and now it’s £13.

That’s over a GRAND’s worth of fees!

Yet he’s only just discovered this and is furious with his bank as he doesn’t remember agreeing to it – they say he did when it was first set up, and sent letters when the fee was increased. The reason he’s not noticed is he doesn’t check his statements; he relies on cash machine balances to see what’s there and (I presume) doesn’t look at the letters either.

Is it misselling or mis-consuming?

I was flabbergasted when I read this. While if the bank signed him up without permission that’s outrageous – not noticing for nine years is pretty stark too. This is someone with a good job – a professional person – so there are no literacy or numeracy issues here. (If this rings alarm bells with you – I’d take an immediate look at the Direct Debit Audit guide).

While with things like PPI misselling or foreign exchange loading the charges are hidden, here they’re transparent and you have a choice.

If we assume the bank didn’t actually ask for permission – is it still fair to pursue a misselling case if you’ve never noticed in all these years?

Comment and Discuss

A bit of lawyer humour on bank charges… spotted in the New Law journal “Civil Way” column.

Comment and discuss

One kind MoneySaver popped me an email to suggest that HSBC was now using our Savings Fountain concept in its adverts.

The fountain idea is simple: as the highest paying after-tax savings products such as cash-ISAs or regular savers allow different amounts in them, it’s all about filling up the top product then letting the rest overflow.

And lo and behold it is, here’s a screen grab…

I first came up with this analogy more than five years ago (you can see it explained here – savings fountain) and have broadcast on it many times often using a champagne fountain as a prop.

Whether this was a spontaneous similar idea or it’s been in their pot for years I don’t know, and as you can’t copyright ideas, we’ll just look at the old adage “imitation is the greatest form of flattery”.

The only problem with HSBCs lovely graphic is the fountain is about using the best-buys, whereas HSBC’s just chosen its own products – far from top players.

So if you want to do the fountain first use the top cash ISA, then top regular savings, then top savings account. Sadly HSBC don’t appear prominently in any of those.

Comment and Discuss.

It staggers me quite how many grammar fiends take the time to e-mail about the apostrophe in ‘Martin Lewis’ MoneySavingExpert.com’ in the site logo, arguing it should be ‘Martin Lewis’s’.

So it’s time to blog on it, so we can simply link here every time we get a complaint. While you may not agree, at least it shows we’ve thought about it.

MSE Judy’s grammar masterclass

My own spelling and grammar leave a lot to be desired – one of the reasons I originally chose to be a broadcast rather than a print journalist. So to take this further, I’m handing over to MSE Judy, a confirmed member of the Eats, Shoots and Leaves brigade, to go through the grammar issues:

“It’s grammar purists who would say technically our logo is incorrect, and this method is only acceptable for classical names, such as Niklas. But language evolves, and many now tend to ignore the ’s’ after the apostrophe.

“Check out Wikipedia’s take on best practice:

If a singular noun ends with an /s/ or a /z/ sound (spelled with -s, -se, -z, -ce, for example), practice varies as to whether to add ’s or the apostrophe alone. A widely accepted practice is to follow whichever spoken form is judged better: the boss’s shoes, Mrs Jones’ hat (or Mrs Jones’s hat, if that spoken form is preferred). In many cases, both spoken and written forms differ between writers.

“The Times Guide to English Style and Usage (1999) also says:

Beware of organisations that have apostrophe variation as their house style, e.g., St Thomas’ Hospital, where we must respect their whim.

“And while you could argue that even on pronunciation it’s wrong, far more important is that the extra ’s’ looks hideous in the logo, and with language being fluid, both arguments are quite strong.”

Self-definition is crucial

As Judy rightly says, the logo does look awful with the extra ‘s’, and that’s a key reason for not doing it. Ultimately, whatever the grammar situation, this is arguably a branding and design issue. In which case, grammar is firmly relegated. Just ask eBay, iTunes or npower.

Comment and Discuss (I’m sure you will!)

Following on from my last blog about Is ICICI an Indian bank?, I was interested to read the forum discussion. There Fudge 1977 was one of many to voice the following sentiment:

“With the push to ‘buy British’, maybe you could just highlight British owned banks when referencing them.

I’m buying british where I can do which isn’t xenophobic or whatever, it just keeps people in jobs which is good for our economy. Yes, it can cost me more sometimes but I guess it’s just a moral dilemma….”

Putting aside whether you’re in favour of this (it could equally be argued there are countries in the world who need our support more than we do), what interests me is the concept of a British Bank.

Certainly it’s nowhere near as easy to define as you’d think; in a world of international global capital what counts?

Some examples of foreign British Banks…

All the following UK registered banks could be defined as overseas.

• Abbey: Owned by Spanish based Bank Santander.
• Alliance & Leicester: Owned by Spanish based Bank Santander.
• Bradford & Bingley: Owned by Spanish based Bank Santander.
• Clydesdale Bank: Owned by the National Australian Banking Corporation.
• Egg: Owned by US banking giant Citibank.
• HSBC: Floated in the UK but ultimately the “Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation” so Chinese now.
• Post Office Savings: Owned by the Bank of Ireland, not covered by the UK financial services compensation scheme (see Safe Savings).
• Yorkshire Bank: Owned by the National Australian Banking Corporation.

Comment and Discuss

I’ve just spotted the most terrible promise in a shop window and wonder if you can beat it…

In the Money Diet, I write through a large explanation of what different shop slogans actually mean, but the following really is absolutely meaningless…

Lets just examine the words:

• 60% less than what? A discount of 60% is a good one, but here it doesn’t actually state what the discount is off. This isn’t a sale – it’s not a reduction in price. Regular shoppers will get the message that this is off the list price, but the lack of specification or small print means actually it’s pretty irrelevant.
• It’s an ‘up to’? Yet this isn’t even a discount of 60%, it’s got the killer “up to” in front of it, so the discount is anything from 0% to 60%; in other words it means nothing. While I’m not suggesting TK Maxx does this… if you had 3,999 goods at full price and 1 at 60% off, this slogan would still fit.
• What on earth does ‘always’ mean? The real doozy here is the use of the word ‘always’. It is a completely flaccid phrase that adds nothing and doesn’t change the meaning a jot. To say ‘always up to’ is an oxymoron, it simpy doesn’t make sense. Of course the marketers intent to impart the feeling of consistent discounting – but it doesn’t really mean it.

Don’t get me wrong, actually TK Maxx is a good shop for those who want cut cost branded goods, and I know many MoneySavers like it. Yet as a phrase, awful!

Spotted any worse?

Comment and Discuss

ICICI is a massive Indian bank, but on this site we’re only ever referring to its fully UK owned and regulated UK savings subsidiary that has exactly the same protection as any other UK savings institution (see savings safety). Yet this is what I wrote in this week’s e-mail…

New top fixed savings. Lock-in at 4.35% for 2 yrs or 4.07% for 18 mths. Updated Article
Fixed savings rates are on the up, with the best 2-yr fixes beating instant access by over 1% point; though you sacrifice access to the cash. 2-yr Fixes. UK subsidiary of Indian bank ICICI* (min. £1,000) is now joined by private bank Rothschild* at 4.35% AER (min. £20,000) Shorter Fixes: Building soc. Stroud & Swindon pays 4.07% AER until Nov 2010 if (min. £2k), while for a year National Counties is 3.91% (min. £20k) and ICICI* 3.75% (min. £1k). How safe? ALL these accounts have the full UK protection for up to £50,000 per person, per financial institution. Is it worth it? Most economists predict rates will stay very low into 2010, but after that who knows. If rates rise, fixed money is locked away, so you could lose out especially on longer fixes. FULL info, more options and instant access best buys in the Updated Guide: Top Savings Related: Savings Safety, Fixed Savings, Cash ISAs

Fascinatingly, I’ve just learned the link to Rothschild bank was massively more popular than the one to ICICI. Now some of this may be because Rothschild is a new product and therefore some people will already be up to their safe savings limit in ICICI, but I suspect the majority is due to the phrase “UK subsidiary of Indian bank”, even though later we explain that it has the same protection.

This has made me question whether it’s fair to mention ICICI’s Indian origins. When we write about Abbey or Alliance and Leicester we don’t write “UK subsidiary of Spanish Bank…” Actually the only other time I can think we currently mention it is for ING Direct which is Dutch, but then it does matter, as unlike ICICI it is not part of the UK compensation scheme.

While ICICI has had some worry over its stability (thankfully it seems to have diminished), it’s not its ‘Indianess’ that causes worry, no more than those Building Societies with stability worries have them because they’re British. And in all cases the protection is the same.

So I’d love your views, is it time to drop ICICI’s Indianess… as it unfairly puts people off?

Comment and Discuss

How this site is financed. Any links with a * by them are affiliated. That means go via this link and a contribution may be made to MoneySavingExpert.com, which helps it stay ad-free and free to use. You shouldn’t notice any difference, the links don’t impact the product at all and the editorial line (the things I write) is NEVER impacted by it. If it isn’t possible to get an affiliate link for the best product, it’s still included in exactly the same way. As I believe transparency is important, I’m including the following ‘un-affiliated’ web-addresses for the same things: iciciukpromotions.com, rothschildreserve.co.uk. Read more about this in how this site is financed.

Having just been away in the sun for a few days, I’ve discovered MoneySavingExpert.com has a bespoke new service for nerds, which even I hadn’t been told about. Quite remarkably, the site can now predict British Weather.

I first noticed the phenomena a couple of weeks ago, when between 1,200 and 1,700 people joined the email over the weekend, by far the lowest for any weekend this year. Now I decided this couldn’t be to do with the fact it was my wedding weekend, but instead to do with the hot weather.

After that we nipped away for a few days in the sun, yet first Thur then more so on Friday the number of sign-ups was much higher than the prior week, so without checking I sent the following nerdy email to my team:

“I thought I would try to predict that the weather yesterday was dreary and today is poor.

How? The only information i’m using is the number of sign-ups to the email list, which has been quite a bit higher the end part of this week than last week. While some is probably down to the great Tesco code in the Right Hand Side bar – I suspect the weather plays a big part.”

And indeed the rather disconsolate message came back that after the prior weekend’s sun, it was indeed now peeing it down.

So it seems, for obvious reasons, there’s a direct correlation between the number of people joining the distribution list for the weekly e-mail and the weather. If you’d like to use this new service you can see the number so far each day yourself in the stats section, bottom left of the home page. Then again, you may find this link even more useful.

Comment and Discuss

Two months and no base rate cut. Not surprising I suppose as now we’re at 0.5% there’s not exactly anywhere for rates to go. Yet it’s the long term that’s more concerning, as we adapt to this low interest rate, low inflation (or even deflationary) environment, the shock once rates return even just back to where they were a year ago could be a problem…

It won’t be quick

Rates are unlikely to move for the moment.

• Not much room to drop rates.
• Economic stimulus still needed so rates aren’t going up.
• A need for stability.
• We’ve switched to printing money (or ‘quantitative easing’ to dress it in its official disguise.)
• There’s a need to wait and see if quantative easing is working.

Add to that the Bank of England’s latest inflation report, which assumes that base rates will still be 0.5% into 2010, and economists have read as a strong signal moves aren’t planned for a while yet.

Of course the only certain thing in the current climate is the uncertainty, and there’s the question of still-high CPI inflation, but on the balance of probability it seems the most likely path.

Can we cope with base rate rises?

So for me the big question right now isn’t ‘will we stay at this current interest rate’, but once we move (in maybe up to a year at a guess), assuming it’s upwards, how quickly will rates rise again?

Let’s suppose inflation’s bubbling at the extreme and we see a mirror image of the 5% cut in just a few months. That’ll leave those sitting on SVR or tracker rate mortgages back to where they were eight months ago.

The mortgage elastic only stretches one way.

There’s a funny thing about price rises after price cuts… the feel-bad factor of the rise is not proportionate to the cut’s feel-good factor. In other words, the rise is much worse than that cut was good.

Suppose someone was paying £1,000 a month on a mortgage and it dropped rapidly to £500, then returned six months later to £1,000. Most people’s psychology will mean that paying £1,000 again feels much more expensive than the first time. This is partly due to what I call “forgotten gold”.

Usually this happens the other way, when people get a pay rise. You were earning £25,000 a year, then it’s £30,000 but very quickly you adapt and stop enjoying the new salary rise as spending increases to take account of the new income and expectations. It’s the reason why if you want to put part of your new salary aside, do it by standing order the very FIRST month the payrise starts… after even a couple of months you’ll find yourself saving less as you don’t want to forgo the benefit.

Much of this is true with the mortgage scenario, tracker holders have adapted to having the extra cash. Those who are simply saving it in a high interest account won’t be hit too hard, but those who are spending it each month will feel the pain.

And that’s the problem, people are bad at cutting back, and over the last ten years far too many have learned to rely on debt to fill the gap (see stop spending guide). Not what you need when rates are jumping.

Comment and Discuss

For the first time I received a Who’s Who entry form the other day, which is quite cool, and as it’s free I thought… why not.

Then I answered my own question… because filling in the form is more difficult than you might think. What’s my job title, is it just “Money Saving Expert” or do I include the website, journalism & broadcasting? Then the careers section is about “main positions” so what counts as main, do you stuff it with things or keep it sparse? Is it a matter of career reference for everything, or just absolute major jobs.

However all of that’s easy compared to “Recreation”. To help, I peeked at some existing entries, and they varied from simple “Golf, Tennis, Books” type to the “Climbing Kilimanjaro backwards wearing leather pants and singing show tunes” type. Since near the entry form it lists some “unusual recreations”, I wanted to be a bit creative, so I ummed and ahhed and finally came up with:

“Recreations: Trying to get my average Scrabble score above 400, Reading historic novels, Very poor golf, Anything with lists, Jive, Watching athletics.”

My favourite bit though was under the “Clubs” section, I just put Manchester City FC.

Try the recreation one yourself… it’s not easy

Comment and Discuss

I saw the new Pepsi Max TV ad last night , and was slightly bemused. The ‘Pepsi Max guys’ are at a cricket match. In a chiller box the steward has a raft of Pepsi Max cans. A streaker runs on the pitch, the steward chases her, and when he returns the Pepsi Max has gone. Yet our ‘heroes’ are drinking cans of it, and then the punchline… one of their number returns to his seat taking off his girl disguise suit.

Now while it’s meant to be funny, it’s effectively showing the brand heroes stealing the drink. The message is meant to be Pepsi Max is cool and naughty, but it also seems to indicate that nicking it is fine too and just a laugh. What a rather silly premise; I suspect supermarkets and vendors wouldn’t take the same view if people decided to follow Pepsi’s ‘help yourself’ motif from their stores – never mind the company itself.

Am I just having a sense of humour failure…

Comment and Discuss.

This is perhaps the most bizarre blog I’ve ever written. Yet I thought I should warn people about pine nuts. For the last five days I’ve been complaining about a strange after-taste when I eat anything; it’s almost but not quite metallic.

Having had a filling a couple of weeks ago I thought it might be that but nothing seemed wrong. Yet the taste persists and it’s been driving me up the wall.

So I decided to use Google to look up strange tastes and I found the following:

• Chinese pine nut taste problems.
• Wikipedia on pine nuts: Risks of eating pine nuts. The eating of pine nuts can cause serious taste disturbances, developing 1-3 days after consumption and lasting for days or weeks. A bitter, metallic taste is described. In general, a minority of pine nuts on the market present this problem. Though very unpleasant, there does not seem to be a real health concern.
• European Journal of Health. Taste disturbances after pine nut eating.

Now do note I wasn’t looking for pine nuts; you wouldn’t exactly think to would you? Yet the taste disturbance was EXACTLY what I’d described. And no surprise, for the last fortnight I’ve twice had a new salad from a ‘select your own salad ingredients’ place and i’ve asked for pine nuts in it, having never really eaten them before.

While it’s not a scientific diagnosis, and I’m not a medical person, the correlation is pretty strong. Strange taste in mouth – newly started eating pine nuts – Google full of pine nut taste distruptions.

Needless to say… they’re off my menu from now on.

PS. Seems there’s a trend happening here; the day after I wrote this the Mail published this story: Pine Mouth Puzzle

Comment and Discuss

As a big supporter of access to education, each year I do an unpaid radio morning in conjunction with the government to explain how student finance works, as there are so many myths and misunderstandings (the parents’ guide to student finance we do each year is part of this).

By bad fate this year’s was scheduled in for tomorrow. Yet last night we heard about the fact the government was going to break the link between student loans and inflation (see student loans: government fails to honour promise); something I think is a dangerous principle and have press released on.

Should I do the day?

This put me in a bind. I think what the government has done is wrong, yet I still passionately believe we need to promote higher education as a viable financial option. Plus it gives me an opportunity to run through my ‘debt isn’t bad, bad debt is bad’ spiel which explains what good and what bad borrowing is: crucial to those just entering the financial world.

However, to do it tomorrow when the student loan issue is so fresh, would mean I’d have no choice but to slag the government off. Doing this when it’s paid for a radio studio (it hires the studio and then you do about 40 local radio interviews) doesn’t seem fair to me.

So I called its communication agency to give them the choice, saying unfortunately either it needed pulling or they needed to be aware what I was going to say. I have an agreement with them anyway that I’m free to say what I want, yet that usually coincides with the message it wants to get out.

In the end we agreed the best route was to pull the day. Of course I’m still going to rant about the student loan issue, but it’s slightly unfair to do it on the government’s own time. I hope we’ll be able to rekindle the day once the student loan funding issue comes down, then while I’ll still mention it, it needn’t be the entire focus.

Comment and Discuss.

While checking out how the savers’ rights petition was doing on the number 10 website, I clicked the closed polls section. In there, the tenth biggest ever poll on the site with 70,000 plus signatures is the Bank Charges Consumer Charter.

Scanning the polls above it, every single one of them has (with response) next to it… meaning the government has responded. Not this one though; it sits there naked in solitude. “The biggest poll the Prime Minister has ever ignored!” – not exactly the accolade wanted. Now don’t think this is an issue of scale, there are scores of closed smaller polls which Mr. Brown has decided to respond to.

So why not bank charges? Is it not a big enough issue? Well I doubt that; over 5.8m template letters have been downloaded from this site’s bank charges guide alone, and millions more from elsewhere.

So what is it? Why have politicians singularly failed to address this issue? Regardless of viewpoint, not responding is plain rude – isn’t that what the petition system is set up for?

Let’s hope the savers’ rights petition gets a little bit more attention.

Comment and Discuss.

I’ve been appearing in dictionary corner on Countdown this week. The shows were actually recorded back in March. As you can see from my blog at the time, Doing Countdown and getting a rude word to boot, I had a fun time.

It was yesterday’s (Wed) episode that was supposed to contain the rude word, and while I haven’t seen it myself I’ve been told it wasn’t broadcast.

So I can now reveal (if you didn’t guess from the blog title) the word was “stiffies”. Now there’s no doubt it’s a word, and is in the dictionary; the problem is there’s only one definition, which isn’t that easy for mid-afternoon telly. Luckily for Countdown, as it was from dictionary corner not the contestants, it’s possible to edit it out without impacting the result of the game.

As it wasn’t broadcast I can tell you the full story now. Once we realised what the word was, as the clock was ticking down, I wrestled with whether to say it or not and tried to come up with a way round it saying something like (from memory from two months ago so give or take):

“Well we do indeed have an eight letter word here. Now it’s an interesting one for this time in the afternoon, and so to make it easier I thought I would explain how to think about it.

When you walk past a shop they often have mannequins in the window. Some of these are flexible and can be positioned any way you want, while others are rigid and unmoving. So if you had a collection of these you could call them “stiffies”.

Comment and Discuss.

Quite a strange experience tonight. Watching Fawlty towers and up pops the MSFs Uncle Terry (Terence Conoley). I always knew he’d been in it but until tonight had never seen him.

He’s actually in two episodes. The first was the very first Fawlty Towers “A Touch Of Class” where he constantly demands with ever increasing fury a “Gin & Orange, a lemon squash and a scotch and water”.

What was rather surreal is the fact that having seen it before I knew exactly who the character was, but until watching it now it’d never clicked that’s who Terry was. After seeing it I realised how many other things I’d seen him in. Terry is now nearly 90, and full of wonderful stories, with a fantastic cut glass accent and manner (he’s an ex-opera singer too).

Having seen the first it was a quick fast forward to the the next one he was in – the “Waldorf Salad” episode. Again he’s playing an irate “Mr. Johnson”, this time in a wig, which apparently he went shopping with John Cleese for, to ensure he wasn’t recognised as the same actor from the first series.

Go “Uncle” Terry!

Comment and Discuss.

I’m just finishing work on an ITV1 Tonight for Friday 8 May on credit ratings on how they work and how to boost them. As always when filming a detailed programme like this I learn new useful titbits which I can add to the guide (see credit ratings).

Each time though, it tends to be something even more niche and technical, this time it was that you can delink your credit score if you’ve a still open but not active joint account, plus for the first time looked into fraud scoring with National Hunter (the guide should be updated with that by tomorrow).

What was funny about this though is my first EVER TV package was on credit ratings and how they work. It was back in January 2000, I’d just left the BBC and was starting at Simply Money TV as a reporter. The channel hadn’t launched yet and we were doing films for pre-launch; so I did a six-minute film on how credit ratings work.

It was back then I remember coining the phraseology I still use now: “Credit ratings don’t exist. Credit Blacklists don’t exist. Each lender has its own unique scoring system to work out if you’re a profitable customer.” Thankfully no editions exist on You Tube; it was a long time ago and I was a rather shy first time 27 year old new reporter (I’d been a producer previously).

I’ve since written and done a lot on credit ratings, and each time the knowledge base grows. This particular programme was fun to do as we had a panel with James, who runs education for Experian, and mortgage broker Ray Boulger of John Charcol. I think by the end of it we’d all learned little titbits off each other and hopefully the programme’s better for it.

Comment and Discuss.

On my GMTV Lorraine slot this morning, I was talking about BT’s free line installation deal (see free BT installation note). It’s a rare chance to avoid the usual £122.50 cost.

I’ve just had one of those calls … the producer rang to say “can I just check, at the end of the piece, you said free line rental. That was just a slip wasn’t it?” It seems BT has had calls requesting free line rental and has called GMTV.

From what I recall, I choked just before as I was speaking (you’ll remember if you saw it) and had to stop, it threw me a bit. The whole piece was about line installation, but it shows that even one word misplaced towards the end can be a problem. I suppose if I thought there was a small chance of free line rental I would’ve called too.

Though it’s very frustrating – especially as I wasn’t aware I’d done it until I got the call.

So sorry BT & anyone who saw it … sometimes the wrong word comes out.

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