Martin Lewis: Bullshit, Balcony Boys and Mick Jagger – what my student union year taught me about life

The meeting would start with the Gen Sec having to stand on the stage and present a weekly report, before we moved on to debating resolutions any student could propose. These would then be voted on, and would set the official Students' Union view, and often mandate us, the Union Officers, to take action. It all sounds very civilised. It wasn't, it was a bear pit.

The UGM was in the 'Old Theatre' which had two floors. All the political and student union hacks would sit on the lower floor – with easy access to jump to the stage if you were going to speak – while the upper floor was stuffed with the self-titled 'Balcony Boys (& girls)', some of whom were there for a bit of politics, but most the entertainment, humour, and heckles. And like any pack, they often sensed and turned on any weakness (with occasional limits for taste).

Often Balcony Boys would come in, armed with copies of The Beaver, the LSE student newspaper… they'd then rip out a page, roll it up into a ball and throw it at the speakers. The higher up the Union pecking order you were, the more it was deemed acceptable to pelt you. Towards the end of my year, a few developed what became called 'Scud' missiles, where most of a whole newspaper would be tightly rolled, and the rest rolled into a handle which was taped to it, so it could be spun round and thrown with power.

LSE student newspaper 'The Beaver', 7 March 1994

Probably the biggest cheer I remember ever getting as Gen Sec, was when, I think it was Khalid (nice fella from my halls) who was on the cricket team threw a 'Scud' at me while I was making a speech, and by reflex not talent, in one motion I caught it, and threw it back, by some miracle directly hitting him, without breaking my sentence.

Yet far more often than not, I was the one being pelted (I was deluged by three black bags worth of paper during my only two-minute election hustings speech). It's by far the best communications training I've ever had! After you've coped with that, live TV is easy-peasy (even the stand-up I did a few years later paled in comparison).

Meeting Mick Jagger backstage at Wembley

The UGM even came up during probably the highlight of my year. Gary Delaney (who some of you may know now as a brilliant but edgy one-line stand-up comic), the entertainment sabbatical, and I were invited to Wembley Stadium to meet Mick Jagger after students had voted him in to be that year's Honorary President.

For me, it was scarcely believable. Only four years before that, barring going to school, I'd hardly ever gone out, too scarred and scared to do so, mainly sticking at home (in rural Cheshire). Now I was walking into the Rolling Stones hospitality area to have a sit down with then Mr Jagger (I've put the article I wrote about it at the time below).

And if I remember correctly, when we three chatted, even though he was about to go and perform in front of 10,000s, he asked about the UGM (which he knew about from his time as an LSE student, and said he'd always found the idea of speaking at it as petrifying).

The LSE Magazine, summer 1995

I felt my first taste of having a drive to get things done

Of course, being a student union sabbatical (a paid elected post you take a year out of study for) is a full-time job, and I revelled in it. It took six or seven years after that, only once I started becoming the Money Saving Expert, until I again found the same work ethic and drive as I had then. I remember losing myself in it, spending every hour I had focused on the tasks.

I'd a manifesto I wanted to deliver. It'd included getting chips served in the student union vegetarian café. It doesn't sound much, but it was a battle, overruling the professional staff there who hated the idea (and discovering a hidden fryer that'd been covered over to use as a table). Yet a manifesto promise is a manifesto promise (the chips proved popular and got more people into the café). Then, some fun, instigated by Gary Delaney, we brought the Chuckle Club, a comedy club, in as a weekly residency in the Three Tuns student union bar.

I didn't realise then, that it'd turn out to be a partial apprenticeship for what'd eventually turn out to be my vocation – I was representing students on countless committees at the School, learning how to present policy papers, read rule books and more. I spent months rewriting the Union Constitution to try and restructure it and make it more relevant, and managed to get it passed through the UGM (thanks to semi-Balcony Boy and, crucially, editor of The Beaver newspaper Ron Voce's help – an early lesson in the power of the media).

LSE student newspaper 'The Beaver', 16 January 1995

And a bit of bullshit too…

And then, like most of my predecessors for the prior 30 or so years, I took on the challenge to get student representatives on both the LSE's Academic Board and the Standing Committee (effectively the executive Board of Directors) of the Court of Governors – the real power in the institution. Having seen many try this, and fail, by organising student protests in the streets, I went for a different tack.

I tried to keep it low-key, wrote a short speech on synergies for the Union, academics and the School, and aimed to make it feel boring and uncontroversial… after all, the people who got to vote on it were academics and governors, not the students, so why rile them up? It worked. We finally got both.

I still have a vivid memory of the petrifying final set-piece at the Court of Governors; made up of about 80 members of the great and the good. There'd been a short discussion on 'Standing Committee Membership', and after a few minutes, the Chair of Governors went to move on to the next topic, but I called for a vote.

He replied that 'we don't vote at the Court of Governors', but having done my research, I quoted a little known by-law that stated that any governor (including student governors) did have the right to call for a vote (maybe my first 'loophole'). This was confirmed to the Chair by the Clerk of the Court and the vote was on.

That led to a formal debate, which centred on the arguments between me and a leading commercial QC who was on the standing committee and led the opposition to students joining it. His prime point was that students couldn't cope with the 'fiduciary responsibility' of being on the Committee... we had a long, detailed back-and-forth about that, point and counter-point. Eventually, the vote came and staggeringly the governors sided with us, the students, against the School's leadership.

After the vote, the late Sir Peter Parker, the then-Chair of Governors, came to congratulate me on 'an unprecedented session'. I thanked him and asked if he'd mind if I asked him a question. He said of course, so I said: "What does fiduciary responsibility mean?" He paused, looked slightly askance, then burst out laughing.

I'd had no clue what it meant when arguing it, I just rebutted whatever the QC said. I bumped into him many years later and he mentioned he'd told that story at the dinner table, many times.

LSE student newspaper 'The Beaver', January 1995

That meeting put me on the path to being the Money Saving Expert

I was delighted that we'd won, but quite surprised at what it meant for me. After that meeting, towards the end of my one-year Gen Sec term, I got messages from quite a few of the governors offering me to come in to discuss jobs, including Sir Peter Parker, who said I should go and work for his son in financial PR.

I did, it was my first proper post-uni job. I was there two years, and learnt a lot, including that I was on the wrong side of the fence and wanted to be a journalist. So I left to go get a postgrad in broadcast journalism (more on what happened after that in my biography page).

What a year! I grew so much. Learnt so much. Failed and succeeded. Laughed and cried. But overall I loved it. Without it, I don't believe I would be doing what I do now (and thankfully it put me off going into politics – I don't want to live in an adversarial world).

Of course, I had sad and bad moments too, times I hated, but overall it was a huge positive, so I've chosen to focus on those.

I hope you've enjoyed my reminiscing.