Episode description

Betting and Investment: Laurie Taylor explores the connections and the differences between two apparently very different phenomena - the football pools and the stock market.

He's joined by Keith Laybourn, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Huddersfield, who charts the rise and fall of the football pools over the 20th century. In its heyday, millions of working class people hoped for a life-changing jackpot cheque presented by a sporting personality and stories of big wins punctuated the news. So what led to a flutter on the pools falling out of favour?

And Amy Edwards, lecturer of Modern British History at the University of Bristol, asks ‘are we rich yet?’ in a study which considers the way in which a growing number of British people engaged in stock market investment as financial markets became part of daily life from the 1980s following the privatisation of British Telecom. Did this development take investment away from the oak-panelled world of the City and give the wider public a genuine stake in popular capitalism?

Producer: Jayne Egerton