Part-relationship counsellor, part-financial guardian angel, BBC TV’s Alvin Hall is on a mission to drive the UK out of the red with his "no pain no gain" approach to personal finance. We need him too. In 1998, the amount of outstanding consumer credit in the UK was £101.7 billion. Get ready for a financial fitness regime with added hardship, where avoiding the sales, asking yourself how many credit cards you really need and even opening a balance statement once in a while are all part of the therapy. 

          Money is so much easier when it belongs to someone else but strip away the emotive attachment and your own finances could be next in line to benefit from a makeover. Alvin Hall’s trick is to keep it simple. Nothing here is rocket science–why should it be? At the end of the day, managing personal finances means having more money coming in every month than going out. There is plenty of advice and tips here to make that happen. Where money management becomes financial planning things get more complex but the principles remain the same: use whatever you can afford to re-invest for future profits.

          Money For Life retains all the charm, exuberance and hard-headed clout of Hall’s popular TV series. He is the ideal financial mentor–who else could laugh indulgently as his "clients" reveal their precarious overdrafts and quaint understanding of credit card etiquette ("I just go up to the credit limit and then apply for another one")? But the joking stops with his rehabilitation programme. 

          Money For Life is full of essential material on saving, investing, mortgages, pensions and attitudes to adopt. Hall’s personality shines through on every page and he’s not afraid to reveal his own investing "idiosyncracies"–"My own passion is for fine art photography and antiques … you may wonder why I don’t just heave this bric-a-brac into the street". It might have been interesting to have related it more closely to the TV series with case studies from some of the characters involved but quibbles aside, this is an excellent place to turn to for anyone determined to take control of those daunting finances.