Andrew Muir is hoping that it will be third time lucky when he takes on the role of chief carpetbagger later this month, in a bid to win average windfalls of around £1,000 for millions of savers and borrowers at the Nationwide Building Society.

Mr Muir has now made two unsuccessful attempts at forcing the Nationwide Building Society to convert to a bank, following the derailing of his last campaign on a technicality. But there will be no such mistakes made in the campaign this time and it will be interesting to see whether or not the members' attitudes to conversion will have softened sufficiently to put an end Nationwide's 153 year-old status as a mutual society.

Speaking to the Times, the recruitment consultant told how he hoped to launch his campaign over the next couple of weeks. Not only is he hoping to get elected to the board of directors and persuade the society to take a vote on the mutuality issue, he is also proposing to restore the windfall rights to all those members who have had previously had to sign them away to charity. To get his campaign off the ground and get the issues onto the negotiating table, he needs to persuade 500 eligible members to sign forms backing his resolution by April 4th.

Mr Muir said: "I will be launching my campaign within a couple of weeks and I also intend to stand as a director. I believe that all members should receive any windfalls." The powers that be at the Nationwide seem relatively unphased by this latest attempt, with a spokesman reiterating: "We said last year that the charitable foundation is bombproof. We stand by our earlier comments."