Martin Lewis, known as the “money saving expert”, has said that he was overwhelmed with messages of support after a radio interview in which he talked about the death of his mother for the first time.

Mr Lewis was a guest on BBC Radio 5 Live, and described the emotional upheaval he suffered after his mother died when he was only 11-years-old.

The 45-year-old financial journalist, whose consumer advice website MoneySavingExpert is viewed by soem fifteen million readers every month, said talking about the bereavement “was far more costly emotionally than I had expected.”

In his blog on Monday, he wrote: “Last Wednesday, for the first time, I spoke publicly about losing my mother when I was a child.

“I wanted to write a brief note today, primarily to express thanks for the huge volume of support, shared grief, emotional outpourings and condolence messages I’ve had.

“I’ve been overwhelmed in every way. While it was the first time I’d spoken about it publicly in detail, I can’t actually ever remember it in that depth privately either.

“Even my wonderful wife learnt things about it from listening. So I found I was still reeling from doing it even a few days later.”

In the interview, an emotional Mr Lewis described how he first realised something was wrong after his mother didn’t pick him up from “Jewish Sunday school”.

He said he was told that she had been involved in an accident with a lorry while out horse-riding with his sister. It was only the following day that his father broke the news that she had died.

“That was the day my childhood ended,” he said.

“I cried every day until I was 15. It was the defining moment of my life.”

He said he believed the trauma had helped him became a success in his adult life, explaining that he felt able to “drive harder, push harder” because he knew no failure could hurt him as much as losing his mother.