Premium Bonds Prize Winner: Mrs Markham

Lady Luck smiles on Herefordshire grocers Mr & Mrs Markham in a jaunty TV ad for National Savings premium bonds. Filmed in a wincingly crude studio mock-up of a grocery shop, the prize-winning couple are visibly ill at ease in front of the camera. The smooth and silver-tongued presenter takes everything in his stride, however, as he quizzes them on their plans for the future.

The £500 prize money (around £8000 at today's value) would seem a relatively modest sum and not enough to 'give up' up a business and retire on, as the ad seems to suggest. Long distance air travel in the late 1950s would be regarded as the height of luxury and sophistication, however, and certainly enough to induce viewers to buy bonds in the hopes of achieving similar good fortune. Introduced by Harold Macmillan in 1956 with the aim of reducing inflation and offering an alternative way of saving, the first prize draw for these government-backed premium bonds was on 1 June 1957. Winning bond numbers are still chosen at random by equipment known by its friendly acronym ERNIE - the Electronic Random Number Indicator - invented originally by one of the Bletchley Park code breakers in 1956.