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The Martin Lewis podcast is twice weekly, helping you navigate our complex consumer world.

I'll walk you through a big money saving topic step by step.

Then in question time, you set the agenda and ask whatever's on your mind.

Would you rather be locked in an empty shopping centre with a thousand snakes or just one gorilla?

Within reason.

The Martin Lewis podcast, listen on BBC Sounds. Hello, I'd like to begin today with a story

about perhaps the most famous art forger in history. In the 1930s, frustrated Dutch painter Han van Meijerun,

or Van Meegeren, as we say in English, set out to embarrass his critics by forging apparently lost Vermeers,

which turned out so convincing the experts declared their masterpieces. One was even bought by

Herman Goering during World War II. After the war, Van Meegroen was caught and charged with treason

for selling a national treasure to the Nazis, until he shocked everyone by declaring

the work of fake, something he proved by painting another on the spot. He was cleared of

collaboration and convicted on the lesser charge of fraud. Pulling off a scheme like that today

would be much harder, thanks to modern authentication techniques, a field my guest knows all about.

Jehan Raghari is an emeritus professor of chemistry at the American University in Cairo,

with a passion for science matched by her love of arts and culture.

Early in her career, she helped analyse the great sphinx of Giza,

and later became fascinated by the world of art forgery, leading to her acclaimed

...