Never mind comedy. Now I’m coining it in with my lockdown board games
When TV work dried up, funnyman Matt Edmondson had a bright idea...
THE best financial decision that the comedian and TV presenter Matt Edmondson ever made was to set up a board games company during lockdown. Edmondson, 35, a Sony Award-nominated radio presenter, came up with game ideas when his TV work got postponed because of the pandemic. He told DONNA FERGUSON the company he co-founded, Format Games, is now a thriving global business. The celebrity podcast he hosts, Not Another Love Song, is available to download now and his bestselling trivia game, So Wrong It’s Right, is priced at £15.99 on Amazon.
Q What did your parents teach you about money?
A THEY encouraged me to save. My mother, who was an English language teacher at the University of Portsmouth, is extremely cautious with money. My dad was a resources manager and a German languages lecturer at the university. He is a trawler of car boot sales and loves a bargain.
They both save their money, and I’m the same. I never buy things on a whim.
Q Have you ever struggled to make ends meet?
A NO, but I did come close. At age 20, I was let go from my job on Children’s BBC. I was spat out with no qualifications and few transferable skills. For six months, I burned through my savings and started having sleepless nights. I still wanted to be a presenter, but I had nothing in the bank and I needed to pay my rent.
As a teenager, I’d had a part-time job selling magic tricks in a joke shop. So I set up a stall in Greenwich market, demonstrating and selling magic tricks. I earned more from that than working at CBBC.
Q Have you ever been paid silly money?
A YES, to do a fun campaign for Curry’s PC World about scooters. I spent half a day being filmed riding around on one. I probably earned enough to pay my mortgage for a year.
Q What was the best financial year of your life?
A IT WAS the 2016/2017 tax year.
I presented several TV shows, including the Xtra Factor, as well as my show on BBC Radio 1.
I genuinely couldn’t say how much I earned. I am not that money driven. I vividly remember my mother telling me that it didn’t matter what I did as long as I enjoyed it and that as long as I was happy, she was happy.
As a result, I never felt any pressure to do a job just because it had status or money attached to it.
Q What is your biggest money mistake?
A IN 2014, I bought a house that I hated and put back on the market just three months later. Soon after moving in, I said to my wife, ‘I don’t think I like it here.’ And she said, ‘Thank God, I don’t either.’
We couldn’t afford an estate agent so I sold the property myself, using an online agent. I managed to sell it for £50,000 more than we had paid for it, which covered most of the costs and stamp duty. But, I still probably lost about £15,000, which needles me to this day.
Q What is the best money decision you have ever made?
A IN THE pandemic, TV shows I was going to make got pushed back and didn’t happen. So my brother-in-law and I set up a board games company. We both put in a laughably small amount of money to get the games manufactured.
It was the best financial decision I’ve ever made, because all those games sold out.
Now we have games in the top 20 best-selling games on Amazon and a thriving global business that not only makes money, it also gives me an outlet for creative ideas.
Q Do you save into a pension or invest in the stock market?
A YES. I started about four years ago when I was in my early30s. I spoke to a financial adviser, who told me to do both.
I think it’s important to save into a pension, because you never know what’s going to happen in the future. The TV industry is volatile and it’s good to have a security blanket.
I have very little tolerance for risk so in my mind, I’ve written off the money I have invested in the stock market. I assume it’s gone. Every year, when my adviser says whether it has gone up or down, I am surprised it’s even there at all.
Q Do you own any property?
A YES, our home, which is a fourbedroom Georgian house in Brockley, South East London. We bought it during the pandemic. I’d rather not say how much it’s worth and I don’t really care. This is our forever home.
Q What is the one little luxury you like to treat yourself to?
A A £65 MASSAGE about four times a year. I love them. If I was a multi-millionaire, I would have one weekly, if not daily.
When I did Xtra Factor, I learned that Simon Cowell had a personal masseuse, who would just turn up and give him a massage. I remember thinking: imagine being that rich, that you employ someone whose sole job is to give you a massage, whenever you fancy one.
Q If you were Chancellor, what is the first thing you would do?
A I WOULD find the money to give the NHS whatever it needed at this time. I would want to make sure that no one has to suffer or wait around as a result of resources being directed towards the pandemic.
Q Do you donate money to charity?
A YES, I give money to Cancer Research and the homelessness charity Shelter. And I never begrudge those direct debits. Whatever the charity is going to spend it on, they are going to do something much better with the money than I would.
Q What is your number one financial priority?
A TO BE able to follow my own creative passions, whether that is a TV show idea, a board game, making an album, doing a podcast or writing a book. Whatever it is, I want to be able to wake up and think, this idea is really exciting, and I have the freedom to pursue it.