He uses his teabags three times and he's getting married for £500... Meet Britain's meanest man

They say you can tell a lot about a man from his shoes. So where on earth do you begin with Ieuan Butler, a 39-year-old builder from Wales? The boots he is wearing today are the boots he has worn every day since, er, he can't remember. Perhaps the Dark Ages.

They started out as 'smart boots', but were downgraded many years ago to 'work boots'. Since he spends most of his days stomping across construction sites, they've taken a battering.



Three years ago, you or I would have flung these boots in the bin when bits started dropping off them. Ieuan, however, was determined that he would get 'another few day's wear', and strapped them together with duct tape.

Penny-pinching: Dubbed Britain's meanest man, Ieuan Butler, can go for days without spending any money

He tells the story with what only can be described as glee.



'What was astonishing was that the tape held for two weeks. I thought, "I'm onto something here," and replaced it, taking a bit more care with it this time. That time it held for even longer.'



And so it has continued. For three years. He can now tell you - in excruciating detail, believe me - everything you never wanted to know about how to hold your shoes together with tape. His smile is a mile wide.



'People say to me, "but Ieuan, you must spend a fortune on gaffer tape?" But I don't. I'm a builder by trade. When you use a roll for a job there is always some left over, and it just gets thrown in the back of my van. This way there is no wastage. It's brilliant.'



To say that Ieuan doesn't like spending money, then, is a bit like saying Ian Paisley doesn't like the Pope. Such is his aversion to scattering the cash that he has just been dubbed Tightest Person in Britain, after a documentary team set out to find the country's most obsessive penny-pinchers.



Ieuan - a father of seven who uses teabags at least three times - was the clear winner. The boots are just the start of it when it comes to 'make-do-and-mend'.



He cleans his house with a tiny pink (toy!) dustpan and brush set that one of his daughters received as a present when she was four. She is now 18. It too needs an introduction to the duct tape. "Sellotape, gaffer tape and duct tape are big parts of my life,' he admits, solemnly.



He is an amateur body-builder, so works out pretty much every day, yet he has had his trainers since 1997, and reckons he will get another few years out of them - thanks to, yes, some tape.



Even when things can't be mended, Ieuan refuses to replace them. He tells me he has worn the same jumper to work for eight years.



'My son said to me the other day, "Dad, didn't that used to be a fleece?" It did, but all the fleecy bits are long gone, so I'm just left with the nylon base. It does the job, though. Some of my friends spend £45 on a single shirt. I think that is the height of madness. And don't get me started on Ruth, my partner. For her last Christmas work do, she went out to buy a new top. I said, "There are a million tops in your wardrobe," but she said she had worn them at least once.



'Once! I ask you! In my book, to pay its way a piece of clothing would have to get worn hundreds of times. I wouldn't spend more than £80 on clothes in the entire year, and that includes work stuff. In fact, I'd probably spend a lot less.'



It is not surprising to discover that Ruth - the mother of Ieuan's youngest child, Rosie, three - does not live with him. They have been together for six years, and have a 'perfect relationship', he says. Except for the fact that his attitude to spending so infuriates her that she refuses to live with him.



'She says it wouldn't work out, and she is probably right there. She would want to buy pillows and cushions and things, which just aren't necessary and which I couldn't bear to look at because it would remind me of money needlessly spent.



Waste not, want not: Ienan reuses teabags three times before finally throwing them away

'Us living apart works out fine. I drive down to see her every weekend and stay at hers. She doesn't much like my driving, so once I am there, we tend to use her car if we have to go out. That suits me absolutely fine because it means I don't have to pay for the petrol.'



Ah, the romance! The pair are planning to get married next year - on a beach, of course, to save venue costs.



'I've told her that I reckon we can do the whole thing for less than £500,' says Ieuan. 'We're going to have everyone in casual clothes to keep costs down, and Ruth's not the sort to be bothered about having a white or peach dress with a veil.'



But if truth be told, Ieuan is a little baffled to have been voted tightest man in Britain.



'Until the documentary researchers came - and sat there with their mouths open - I thought I was pretty normal, really. Now, I guess I see that some people would think I was a little obsessive.



For the first 20 minutes of our interview I find it hard not to laugh at his 'odd little ways'. He is a walking talking calculator, able to tell you the cost of everything, from a packet of Tetley tea to a candlewick (4p, if you know where to go). He has a mobile phone, but prefers to borrow his sons', saving his own free texts and calls.



He has also converted the bottom half of his house into a gym - because he worked out that it would be more cost-effective than forking out for gym membership.



'It was costing me £500 a year to go to the gym, plus petrol costs, which was horrific. Ten years ago, I installed this, and turned upstairs into a kind of bedsit for me. Now I charge others to use my exercise equipment, so I make money from it.'



His body-building means he can't scrimp and save on food as much as some with his tendencies might, but even here things are meticulously planned.



'I spend £45 a week on food, but that is good food - lots of fresh fruit and veg, chicken, tuna, even steak. But I won't buy even a Mars bar on a whim, and certainly not a packet of crisps. My work mates think I'm nuts, but it works for me.'



Life can't be a bundle of laughs with him, though. Poor Ruth, for instance, never gets lavish meals or presents.



'If we are out for the day, Ruth might want to go into KFC, so I'll go with her, but I'll take my own Tupperware box of food with me, and much better value for money it is, too.'



It's all very laudable - if extreme. And the benefits of his frugal living are evident.



Ieuan may not be rich, but he isn't struggling to get by on his earnings, like so many in his position would be. He earns £22,000 a year, in a good year, yet he has paid off all but £18,000 of his mortgage, and his home is now worth £120,000.



He has no debts. And he has also put one son through university and another through college.



'It baffles me when people who earn an awful lot more than me say they can't manage on their money and start racking up debts on credit cards,' he says.



'I have one friend who earns £45,000 a year and says he can't manage. That's ridiculous. If I earned that, in three years I would have £80,000 in the bank, at least.



'I don't have huge savings - I'd struggle to get my hands on £10,000 - but I have something. I'm proud of that. But I've arrived at that point only because I use teabags three times. That's what people fail to grasp.'



So how did he get his miserly reputation? He says that there has never been much money. His parents split up when he was seven years old, and he grew up in a council house with a mother who didn't work, yet knew how to feed a family of four kids on almost nothing.



He remembers his first job, in a stone quarry, aged 16. It paid £57 a week, for 58 hours' work. While his mates were spending every penny that came in on beer and clubbing, even then he was trying to put it away.



'The most I would spend on a night out would be 75p for an egg-fried rice on a Friday night. The other guys would be getting tanked up and broke. I'd be as sober as a judge, but going home with money in my pocket, and that felt good. At the back of my mind, I was always thinking, "Rainy days could be coming".'



And the rainy days have been plentiful, as it turned out. His first marriage, to the mother of his first six children ended, "when a friend of mine offered my wife a better life than I could". Ouch. It's fair to say his ex-wife's attitude to money was different from his then.



'She wanted to spend it as fast as it came in. But I certainly didn't. And we had completely different things to teach the kids about money, too. It's been hard since we split because they want mobile phones and trainers, and I'm the one going, "Do you need this? You don't! Don't be silly."'



He admits that he became obsessive about money - or holding onto it - after that marriage. Sometimes, he goes for days on end without spending anything.



'One of my sons is a boxer. He won a fight and got a write-up in the paper. He told me to buy it, to put it up on my wall. I said, "No, your granny gets that paper, so I will just wait and get hers when she is done with it." That might seem harsh, but I wouldn't dream of spending even 50p it if wasn't completely necessary.'



He is appalled at Ruth's wanton spending. 'She likes the fine things in life,' he says, which makes her sound like Imelda Marcos, but actually Ruth seems perfectly normal. She is a primary school teacher, earning a pretty basic wage. She has no debts that he knows of. How much of a spendaholic can she be?



'But she spent £500 on a Welsh dresser once,' he points out. 'What is that all about? It doesn't do anything. It has no function, apart from to hold things. I told her she was off her head, but she won't listen.'



'The worst thing is that she is getting Rosie hooked on all her habits, too. I've heard her say to Ruth, "When are we going shopping to Next, Mummy?" '



Even Christmas is not a time for excess. This year he did give his kids presents, as he will at their birthdays, but there was no Wii involved. 'I'll give the older ones a couple of pounds, which they can spend as they like. But I won't hand over lots. They have to learn the value of money.'



The other day, one of his sons asked him what he would do if he won the lottery. Would he go crazy at Selfridges? Apparently not.



'I said I'd buy my kids a house - but two or three bedrooms, not four or five. And a car - again, Ford Focus, not silly money car like a BMW. I'd put £10,000 in the bank for them, and that would be it. What would they need with more? You have to work for money. You have to keep your feet on the ground, and know what things are worth.'



Obviously, his feet are closer to the ground than most, given the flimsy nature of those soles. Sadly, the boots are bin-bound. He has just secured a new contract and the site manager told him to get some new ones because his breached every health and safety guideline going.



So how much will he have to spend on a new pair?



'I dread to think,' he whistles. 'But it will be double figures.'



TOP TIPS FOR SAVING CASH IN THE CRUNCH



Ieaun had stiff competition for the title of Tightest Person in Britain. In their hunt, the team heard about a man who used the same piece of foil each day to wrap his sandwiches for a month at a time, and a woman who flushed her loo just once a day to save cash.



Some of the other stars of the programme are Gareth Taylor, a farmer in his mid-50s from Yorkshire, who bought his wife, Wendy, her first ever Christmas present - from him at least - last year. It was a chainsaw. He said their fuel bills were getting so big that she could make herself useful by chopping down trees to put on the fire. Her response, 'I was so stunned I didn't know what to say. But I was a bit chuffed too. I've never ever got a present from him before.'

Ilona Richard, 59, from Scunthorpe calls herself Mean Queen on a frugal-living website and delights in finding new ways of saving money. She buys men's underpants instead of ladies' knickers because she thinks they're cheaper and last longer. 'OK, so there is an extra bit at the front, but that doesn't bother me,' she says.



Aline Hay, 60, shops in a bargain basement supermarket, despite living in a 56-room castle in Scotland. Even so, she finds the cost of dishwasher powder extortionate, so she puts just a tiny amount in each wash. 'Some people will point out it saves me just £30 or £40 a year, but that is a huge difference to me,' she says.

