Television presenter Philippa Forrester launched her career in the Children’s BBC “broom cupboard” continuity announcer’s booth and went on to present Tomorrow’s World, Robot Wars and Crufts. 

She is the author of several books and is currently presenting a YouTube series about switching to an electric car. Now 53, Philippa has three sons, Fred, Gus and Arthur, and lives in the South West.

How did your childhood influence your attitude to money?

We didn’t have much growing up. We weren’t in a cardboard box, but I came from a working-class background, with a mum who managed everything on her own. I was fully aware that money was a precious commodity.

I grew up in a council house that we ended up owning, thanks to Margaret Thatcher’s wonderful world of buying your own home. That influenced my whole generation. The importance of home ownership wafted down to all of us and I had tunnel vision about buying rather than renting. It worked out, because owning property has provided me with security and stability.

I lived in America for a while and there’s much more waste there. In the UK we still have grandparents and great grandparents who wouldn’t waste anything because they lived through rationing – even pieces of string would be saved, just in case.

What was your first job?

I got a paper round at 13 and I’ve paid my own way ever since. At its dizziest heights the pay was £2.60 a week. It was a case of “How quickly can you pedal? The faster you go, the quicker you do it.” After school I worked in an old people’s home. I wanted to go into journalism and in those days you could learn typing at school. From then on, I’d temp in the holidays and because my typing speed was good I got good rates of pay.

How did you get your break with the BBC?

It started as a holiday job while I was at university. I was at Birmingham, doing an English degree. I was involved in student television and we wanted to do live broadcasts at lunchtimes in the student union. So I went on a mission to find out about live broadcasting.

I went to watch Going Live! with Phillip Schofield and Sarah Greene, sitting in the back of the gallery, to see how a live programme worked. I got chatting with Phillip and one of the directors. Children’s BBC was looking for somebody to do links and they put me in touch with someone.

Two days later I was invited for an audition and they offered me a job. I was flummoxed. I was 19 and had a year left at university, but she said: “If you were my daughter I wouldn’t want you to give up your degree, so I’d like to offer you a job in the holidays.”

That’s how I started doing children’s BBC. I can’t think how much I was paid, but I do remember that as a student it was bloody good – I had a great time.

Are you a saver or a spender?

Both. When I started working as a presenter it felt weird spending money on clothes. But I was doing links [between children’s shows], so I was on TV six or seven days a week and I had to up my game wardrobe-wise, because you can’t keep wearing the same thing.

Buying nice clothes was new to me and I had voices in my head from my childhood saying: “No! That’s a fortune – you can’t spend that on clothes.”