Forget pop svengali Simon Cowell, ignore music maestro Jo Whiley, take no notice of the Mercury awards, as I’ve discovered the real predictor behind the musical throne. It’s GMTV’s Glen, and other sound operators there… At the back of the studio is a serious mixing desk and graphic equaliser. Each band which comes in to play usually...

Apply for a product and it puts a search on your credit file, which hits your credit score. Yet many products are rate-for-risk, so without applying you can’t know the rate. This means many people apply for products, get accepted on a higher rate than expected, and then find it more difficult to go elsewhere because of...

MSE towers is in the same office complex as Gu Puds, and the following message came around by email… “Hello Gü lovers Anyone who wants a box of free brownies or Chocs please come up to Unit 1.2 in the next 30 minutes – first come, first serve! Thanks“ I hadn’t seen the email, all I saw...

It was submitted in 2007, the then-largest petition on the number 10 website without a reply from the PM, with over 70,000 recipients. Yesterday that changed: finally there was an answer to the the Bank Charges Consumer Charter. Now admittedly it was simply a cut and paste of the reply Gordon Brown sent in response to our...

I’ve got an ITV1 Tonight programme on Friday night 8pm called “To fix or not to fix?” It’s one of those difficult ones for me as due to a bit of a crash production process (ie turning round in a short space of time), I haven’t seen the programme or the final script yet (I’m writing this...

Many people see one main aim of the work of this site as opposing the banks, and with guides like bank charges, fight rate jacking, and ppi reclaiming, that’s understandable. Yet actually I’ve no problem with banks; often they do good work, there are some great products, and they provide a crucial service in our society. My...

A few months ago we launched the Improve Money Rules In 50 words campaign asking for must-change suggestions. I led with my four big bugbears, one of which was… The “right to know the rate you’ll get before applications go on credit files. Apply for a product and it puts a search on your credit file which...

I missed the start due to zipping home from working on the weekly email to try and catch it. I always hate watching myself and rarely do (do I sound like that? Talk that quick? Gabble that much? Sit like that?), but as the programme was recorded six months ago (see original millionaire blog) I wanted to...

I recently received an e-mail from Marc Gander, one of the founders of our fellow bank charge reclaiming campaigning website the Consumer Action Group. While MSE and I tend to focus on the mainstream and mass elements of reclaiming, CAG tends to be more radical (our different approaches have been a good fit, hence why we jointly...

Yestesrday I spent my day in Granada TV studios Manchester, sitting in dictionary corner filming five episodes of Countdown, to be broadcast at the beginning of October. Unlike last time I didn’t suffer from getting stiffies, though to paint an interesting picture, fogies and orgies did come up together. It’s strange what you notice differently each time...