16 Jun 2026 · 36 min
Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England, talks cricket, monetary policy since 2020, and the Bank's challenges from COVID to inflation. The Bank holds 440,000 gold bars worth £550 billion and keeps £90 billion in cash circulating. Bailey discusses AI-driven crypto scams, new wildlife-themed banknotes, and why the Bank maintains cash despite digital alternatives.
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The TMS Podcast. From BBC Radio 5 Live.
How do you follow the head of MI6 who was our guest at Lords? Well, how about a person who occupies one of the most responsible positions in the country. One of his predecessors founded Chance to Shine, was MCC president. His most recent predecessor is now Prime Minister of Canada. So there's a bit of pressure on our guest who has a job which goes back to an original charter set in 1694. He's been in position since 2020. We all have an interest in his decision-making because it affects our money. Who else would bring a gold bar as a cake? Of course, it's the Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey. It's lovely to welcome you. It's a huge—
Pleasure and thrill to be here, I can tell you.
Let's start with a cake. Oh, a cake, yes. Because I mean, you know, that is fantastic. Richard Moore failed last, 2 weeks ago, to bring a cake.
Did he?
Yeah, he was going to bring one apparently modeled on the MI6 building, and something went wrong. That is a gold bar, and I'm estimating it's round about the 12-kilogram weight.
A real gold bar is just over 12 kilos, yeah. So it looks like a gold bar. It does.
As long as it doesn't taste like a gold bar.
It's not 12 kilos heavy. I have to put in the name check for my colleague James Orchard and his sister Rebecca who made it, and it's tremendously authentic. Now a real gold bar is worth about £1.25 million. I don't think the Queen—
Kate doesn't quite match that. But is that about the right size?
It's about the right size, yeah.
And the writing on it, it says fine gold.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That is to all intents and purposes.
And it's— gold bars come in one of a few shapes. That's what we call a hovis bar, so it's got— it looks a little bit like—
Like the loaf.
Yeah.
It's actually called a Hovis Bar.
Well, that's the nickname. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right, well, look, welcome. What do you think?
It's a proper Test match.
Yeah.
You know, here we are, what, lunch on day 4? Yeah, uh, you know, we've made it to the 4th day. Hey, we've made it to the 4th day. There's still plenty to go. Um, I'm enjoying it. I mean, it was a good morning's play. Uh, you know, I thought the archer's opening spell was fast. I mean, it's, you know, he's got, he's got a tremendously efficient action. I mean, you obviously did when you—
Well, how do you know that?
Because I used to watch you. And also because I can tell a story about you at school if you like.
Oh, not one of those awful stories about what, bullying or something?
No, no, no, you were unfortunate. Well, I know about, it was good from our point of view. So I went to school in Leicester. So we share a common background.
Yes, Wiggaston Grammar School.
Yeah, Wiggaston, yeah. And so we played Uppingham. This is back in, this would've been back in, I don't know about, mid-'70s, and I think we only played Uppingham's second eleven.
Yes, you did. I'm afraid Wigston Grammar School was not considered worthy of the first team.
Yeah, I wasn't actually playing that day, but anyway, look, we turned up and your— the Uppingham cricket masters came to ours and said, look, we've got this lad coming back from injury, right, so he won't be He won't be on top form, but he has played a couple of games for Surrey Seconds. So we were all out for 12, somebody took 8 for 2, and you tell me that was your best— is that your best ever?
Well, until I took 9 for 70 against Kent. But well, look, thank you for mentioning it.
Do you remember the game?
Do you know, I actually do. Yeah, it is ridiculous because I have got such a I've got terrible memory now. I think I just played and watched too much cricket. But I actually do, I remember where the pitch was. I think because it was a ridiculous, I think the game was over in half an hour.
Our finest moment.
We bowled first, I know, but I do remember that. But you do, you did play cricket?
Yeah, not very well, but I did play cricket. Yeah, I did. I played a bit at school, then I played a bit of club cricket in Leicester when I was sort of growing up and still when I was actually going to university. So I played for Oadby. Oby Seconds, I'm gonna be honest. Oby's just a, it's almost a sort of suburb now of Leicester, but it's a little bit south of Leicester.
Yes, exactly. Nice ground, I remember.
Yeah, Upland Road. And we had great fun. I mean, we used to go around Leicestershire playing teams and it was, oh, it was great fun.
Yeah. So sort of village cricket.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, Oby's, I say Oby's is quite urban, but we played village cricket. Yeah, so, and we came up, I remember, came up to Wymeswold, which is your sort of, Oh, it is.
Back of the woods.
Well, I'm told about, yeah, 5 miles from here.
Yeah, yeah, and there was a pretty aggressive looking goat at deep extra cover and it didn't shift. And so, you know, when the ball was hit out there, there was a sort of, when we were fielding, there was a, you gonna get it? Am I gonna get it? Somebody's gotta go and get the ball.
I don't think a goat would.
Goat never moved though, actually.
Probably chew it up, but yeah. Well, it is quite rural around there, Village cricket, you know, I started playing village cricket. It's just so much of a fabric of—
Absolutely, yeah.
This country.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I just—
Yeah.
The whole, the teas and just the whole business of it.
We had another incident a little bit, it wasn't quite as dramatic as yours, but these were in the days when there was still a coalfield in West Leicestershire, in the western part.
Ashby or Coalville.
Yeah, so we went out one day and We played at Rawdon Colliery, I remember. And so we got there and again, you know, the captain came up to our captain and said, look, the opening bowler, he's not gonna be full speed this afternoon 'cause he's literally just come up from a shift. Yeah, you know, 4 for 20 later, we were thinking, what would this guy be like if he, you know, hadn't had a shift?
Wonder who that was, Harry.
Yeah, I don't know.
It might have been Les Taylor, my old mate.
And it was a funny ground because you could hear when the ball hit the ground, it felt hollow. You know, it gave off this sort of slightly hollow sound. Like we were all thinking, what's gonna happen? It's gonna sink or something.
Mine underneath it.
Oh yeah, yeah, no, it's good fun.
Yeah. So what did, what did, what did you, what was your, you know, what did you do? What was your forte?
I was not a very good batsman. Right.
Yeah.
Right.
Keen.
Left-hand opening. Keen.
Middle order.
Sort of opened a bit. Yeah. Opened a bit at school. Yeah. Yeah. But I, you know, I never delayed the number 3 batsman very long.
There must have been any, some sort of high point, was there? A little half century, a raising of the bat somewhere along the way?
30-odd, I remember one day, yeah, you know. Yeah, but you know, I loved it. I mean, yeah, I love cricket actually, so yeah. And I played a little bit at university, and I've, I only ever, I played 2 Sunday games for the Bank of England.
Right, at Roehampton?
Yeah, yeah.
Yes, because we mentioned me playing with Surrey Seconds.
Yeah.
And indeed, and that's where we used to practice. So there'll be some practice here at the Oval, but a lot was done on the Bank of England ground at Roehampton. And I bowled at nets to John Edrich and people like that on those, and Younis Ahmed and those sorts of players down there. And is it still there?
Well, sadly we don't. We got criticized heavily by the Public Accounts Committee in the House of Commons a few years ago, and they said it was sort of too luxurious.
It was a lovely ground.
It was a lovely— I mean, it was very nicely maintained. It was beautifully maintained. We've actually leased it out to the Lawn Tennis Association because the Wimbledon qualifiers have been held there since a bit after the Second World War, I think. And so they've taken the whole thing over now. But we still have a cricket club. They've actually renamed themselves West Wimbledon Cricket Club and they play at Wimbledon Rugby Club, I think. And so we've still got several teams playing.
Yes.
So yeah, there's a lot of, you know, we're very keen on cricket as an institution. A lot of people are very keen.
Yeah, yeah, good. Um, and, and so, so that was kind of it as far as playing was concerned though. What was it? I mean, so did you get to Grace Road when you were—
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot. Yes, I was a member when I was growing up. Yeah, so in the sort of, you know, '70s.
Yeah, right. So players then, so that would have been, um, well, that's the Ray Ellingworth gigs.
Yeah, yeah, um, yeah, so I mean, you know, because Ray Ellingworth— I mean, with— I mean, Mike Turner was the other, correct?
He ran it, he was the boss.
Between them they really transformed it.
Yes.
So, you know, they won what, the old Benson and Hedges Cup a few years ago?
They did. Well, Mike Turner was, he was a player, he was a leg spinner who played one or two games last year, but he was a businessman really.
Yeah.
And he ran Leicestershire, he ran it with a rod of iron, I have to say.
Yeah, I bet.
But very tight. I mean, I think, you know, from an economist's point of view, a businessman's point of view, for him to make a profit. I think he made a profit every year that he ran that club, which is extraordinary, because Leicestershire, it's, it's, you know, you've got the Premiership football team, you've got the Tigers, the Tigers, it's, it's, it's, it's always a third place really in, in the pecking order. And so for him to, to run that, but he, so he took over running the club. Who do we need? Right, Ray Ellingworth, who I think could, you He lured from Yorkshire. I mean, he's in his 40s. Then he needed a bowling attack here. Ken Higgs, recently retired.
You remember they had Graeme McKenzie?
Graeme McKenzie, yeah, fast.
The Australian bowler.
Yes.
And he had a really interesting action because he was almost sort of like side on in this sort of arcing sort of action.
Yes, he did. He was very side on. They still tell a story at Lord's of him bowling a bouncer at Lord's. And the ball going straight into the side screen.
No, it didn't stop.
Bang, straight in.
And then Ken Hicks came from Lancashire.
He did. So he'd retired.
Yeah.
I think he was running a sweet shop or something up in Blackpool. Yeah. And so he was— I mean, he's a terrific bowler.
Yeah.
So he actually came down and did another 10 years, I would think. So Illingworth had his— on his cards. But Ray Illingworth is an interesting one, isn't he? Because he for our age, you're about the same age as me obviously, um, I mean, early captain of England. I remember sitting and watching him and he was such an inspirational—
He's a great tactician.
Yes.
Um, because I always thought it was interesting because, you know, he— I mean, he's an all-rounder in the best sense of the term. Yes. Um, and I always find it interesting that he made them, you know, into, into a very strong one-day team because his, you know, you look at it today, his, his game isn't obviously a one-day game.
Well, there's a containing bowler, He was, yeah, quite successful with his offspin.
Yeah.
But no, he got, I mean, Brian Davison, who was—
Who was very hot.
He hit the ball very hard. Absolutely thrashed the ball.
Yeah.
Roger Tolchard.
Yeah. So these—
Chris Baulderston.
Yeah.
Who bagged a pair here against Michael Holding.
Yes.
We were talking about that game the other day, but opening batsman, and he just gelled a team together.
I saw, I was talking a couple of years ago, I was at Lord's, and I was talking to It was a huge thrill. I spent an hour talking to Geoff Boycott. An hour?
Well, how many words did you get in?
Well, there's a great story actually in the middle of it. It was the Ashes Test. Cameron Green got hit on the head.
Yes.
And so outran the concussion testing. Boycott just turns to me and shouts out, "Get up, you namby-pamby." Well, that sounds like Geoffrey. But he was telling me, he was telling me that, you know, when he grew up with Jack Birkinshaw and—
Yes.
And that they played, you know, they were in sort of practicing endlessly as kids together.
That's right. I'm trying to remember the name of, um, of the coach. It'll come to me. But what was quite amusing about that was that it was actually in a sort of, in basically a greenhouse.
That's— he told that story? Yeah, in a greenhouse.
It was, yeah. Actually, and I did say to Geoffrey once, well, how many windows did he break? And the answer was none.
He never hit it off the ground.
I never hit it very hard at all. Never hit it hard enough to break a pane of glass. Brilliant. Yeah, so—
So how did you find— I mean, you came into the team very young then with all those—
Yeah, so I—
Old hands.
Well, after my 8 for 2—
You were made.
Well, I left. I'm a country boy and I didn't really get on very well down here, so I went and joined Leicestershire, and within just a very few weeks there was an injury crisis.
Right.—
the fast bowlers, Ken Higgs, Les Taylor, who we've mentioned, and it must have been a few others because I was suddenly in the, in the team. And made my debut so against Lancashire, who had been my team, the team that I really loved and followed and supported from the age of 11. And it was all a bit of a crazy dream really, and it soon became a nightmare because their overseas player was one Colin Croft. So if you imagine someone who can't really bat, coming straight from school, age of 18, schoolboy pads, schoolboy gloves, no helmets. And I look around to all these seasoned professionals who, A, were extremely anxious about the prospect of facing Croft, but B, had all the kit, proper pads, thigh pads. I didn't have a thigh pad.
Yeah, what's that?
Yes, exactly. Chest pad, all these arm guard. I had little sort of crinkly green gloves, little plastic boots to bowl in, and schoolboy pads. And for a while it looked nasty because we, I think, lost 6 wickets quite quickly. And fortunately in those days it was a compulsory declaration at 100 overs.
Yeah, I remember that.
Yeah, so I think Paddy Clifton, Jack Burkett, you actually mentioned, got some runs and I was spared.
You were sitting there looking nervous.
But I mean going out. Yeah. Couldn't have gone to face that. But Illy was captain.
Yeah, so I can tell you a sort of slightly parallel story. So going back to the Bank of England actually, in our cricket club. So we used to have something called Governor's Day when we had the sports club. This was a Sunday in July. And one of the highlights, or the highlight of it really, was a cricket game between the bank first 11 and a governor's 11.
Right.
And so when Eddie George was governor, he wasn't, I mean, he loved cricket, liked cricket, but he wasn't really into it himself. So we had an agent who actually recruited the team, whose specialism was West Indian Test players. And some of them were retired. So Alvin Kallicharan and Derek Murray used to come year, year.
Right, yes.
Year after year. But then you'd get years when one or two of them, the current ones, didn't have a county contract and there wasn't a Test series. So one year, Courtney Walsh turns up. So a very good friend of mine, David Buffum, he's sadly passed away now, he was open to batting for the Bank team. Team. And he said to me, he said he knew in advance, he said, my God, I'm gonna be facing Courtney Walsh. You can't face Courtney Walsh. So anyway, after he told me afterwards, he said the first over was okay because he sort of bowled looseners, and then he came up to David and he said, um, I'm gonna come off my test run-up now. And David said to him, do you have to do that? And Courtney apparently just completely deadpan said yes. David said, first second ball, I didn't see it. I heard the wicket, I saw the wicketkeeper going to retrieve the stump. You know, I didn't see the thing at all.
No, that is what the difference is though, isn't it?
Yeah, and we had another year Viv Richards played and I've never seen anybody hit the ball as hard as he did. I mean, it's like a rocket going around.
And that's the difference. And you can sit, and I say to people all the time, you can sit and watch like we are here, or in the crowd, or you can watch it on the telly and you can see the, you know, you can see the ball. Okay, it's going quite, quite fast. But actually, when you sit sideways on, or actually if you do get the chance ever to face that sort of bowling—
Well, when you sit watching—
yeah, yeah, you see—
I went to the last day of the, um, Test, the Test final, the South Africa-Australia game last year, because Mervyn was, was president of the MCC and invited me, and I sat in the pavilion at Lord's And it was fascinating. It was only a morning, but I want Mitchell Star bowling, and he bowled, there was one ball he bowled where he bowled Tristan Stubbs, and Tristan Stubbs played the right shot too late. I mean, the ball went through so fast.
Yes.
But I want to ask you, so talk about changes in cricket and timing on this thing about playing that sort of bowling. I mean, I do watch Twenty20. I'm not a huge fan of it, but I watch them. These kids they've got in India now, I mean, they seem to just—
Extraordinary.
How do they do that? 15 years old. The hand-to-eye coordination, I mean, what's— how do they learn that stuff?
I can't answer that, but I mean, you just sit and just admire. Well, it's astonishing, isn't it? You see how he kicks on and whether he can— people talk about transferring Test match skills to one-day skills. Let's see if he can transfer, yeah, T20 skills to to Test cricket.
Many of the IPL teams seem to have a sort of, you know, somebody who's in their teens or 20s seems to be able to just come on and just—
Well, they've got a billion people to choose from, haven't they?
Bash things right from the start.
Yeah, that's true. But you do watch?
I watch it, yeah, yeah. I don't watch it live. I really am sort of an old-fashioned Test cricket person, but I watch it on television, yeah.
Yes, yeah, yeah. Well, I want to talk to you about your job now, if you don't mind.
You can.
Well, it's just one of those It's, I mean, is it kind of, did you, do you aspire, if you're in your, what you do?
Yeah.
Is this like the top of the tree? I mean, do you aspire to become the governor? Is it like the main, you know, the main—
Well, I mean, I, so I've worked for Bank of England for, well, 40 years now, actually, not quite all the time. And I mean, I love doing what I call complex public policy, and we do a fair bit of that. So, you know, that's what, you know, just keeps me there and keeps my— so yeah, you know, I didn't never set out to be governor. It just sort of happened over the years and I just, I love it.
Yes.
You know, and we deal with the most complicated stuff. I mean, we're dealing with a load of stuff on artificial intelligence at the moment, which—
Well, I'm glad you mentioned that. I saw you featuring a couple of days ago.
Oh, look, me and I did not— Nigel Farage and I did not have a fight. Let's be clear. We both said this, so it's not— you don't have to—
It looked pretty dramatic.
Yes.
But also—
It's actually worrying because it's a fraud.
So just to explain, this thing suddenly appeared.
It's AI. Yeah, it's created an AI. It's— behind it is an attempt to defraud people, you know, which is what's most worrying about it.
I mean, I— So how would—
what? They're trying— it's a cryptocurrency scam.
Right.
So they're trying to use this as a sort of, I don't know, an entrapment mechanism to get people to participate in it. The really frustrating thing we're finding is we can't trace the source of it. They cover their tracks enormously well. So they appear often as ads on YouTube.
Right.
And they don't get saved. So you've got to literally almost sort of capture them at the moment. And then even then you've got to trace the source. And so there was one last year actually, and it was quite funny because I hadn't seen it and I kept getting people stop me in the street. I get the train to London Bridge every day and back from where I live. And the guy who was doing the sort of signals to send the trains off, suddenly he turned— I don't know him— he said, have you seen this? You know, and I said, oh, God, I said, I don't know. That one actually, we asked—
So you've had all the best, I mean, the best boffins you could find to find out where this thing came from.
Well, even if you capture the thing, it's quite hard to trace it. They cover their tracks. Technologically speaking, they cover their tracks very well. And I worry for the public. I mean, it's ludicrous. I hope people realize that will never happen. But I worry for the public.
Nigel can be a bit belligerent, can't he?
Well, he was actually quite nice. He said, he and I don't agree on everything. We've only met once, but he and I don't agree on everything. But he did say, but we'd never do that.
Yeah, yeah. It's interesting because actually it talks about the relations with politicians really. I mean, you are completely independent.
Yes.
But, and yet you must be dealing with politicians.
Oh yeah, I see a lot of them. I mean, we're independent and it's so important. I mean, but the independence is prescribed in legislation, so it's very well defined. I spend a lot of time appearing in Parliament giving evidence, which is important as part of our accountability. So I see a lot of them, yes.
But when, I mean, they want you to do things that are going to suit them.
Surely.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Feel good. So do you feel that pressure? I mean, you know, that like cutting interest rates, for instance, I mean, do you feel, well, for two reasons, a, pressure from the politicians who want you to do it because they want people to feel good, and actually I want you to do it because I want you to make me feel good, I want a bit more money in my pocket, thanks very much.
Yeah, I know.
It's a big responsibility.
Yes, and we always have to say, look, you know, in the long run, you will feel good if we have low inflation. But I understand, look, I understand people, you know, people want, tend to want lower interest rates. I mean, it's been an interesting time. I always, you know, joke with Mark Carney that, you know, he had tremendous timing and I've got terrible timing because I started my term as governor on, in March 2020, just as COVID was—
Yes, it was a bad date.
We had a, literally in the first week, we had a meltdown in financial markets. We had to do an emergency monetary policy intervention. Markets, and we went into lockdown at the end of the week, and I didn't see the staff for a bit after that.
So it was a great start.
Yeah. And we've gone on that way, you know, we've had the Ukraine war, we've had, you know, a little bit of domestic issue with the Truss government, and then, you know, we've obviously most recently we've had the Gulf, uh, of course, conflict.
Yeah, yeah.
The TMS Podcast from BBC Radio 5 Live.
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I'm not doing it too political here, but with the Truss thing, could you see that this was going to end badly?
Well, I've never met Liz Truss, so I would say this because I'm not, you know, I don't pass judgment, you know, because I've never met her. I think the idea that, you know, she didn't want to work with the authorities when we are there to, you know, we're all trying to do the same thing for the country, was difficult.
Yeah, yeah. Did we learn anything from COVID I mean, would lockdown work again?
Well, I think we did learn a lot from COVID First of all, I mean, you know, we learned to work differently. Now, I saw the other day, was it Surrey Cricket, County Cricket Club, were advertising that you can sort of come and work here.
Oh yes, bring your laptop.
Bring your laptop here.
Get your Wi-Fi.
So I think the fascinating thing is that it has changed working practices. You know, I mean, pre-COVID, I think, you know, you just went to work every day. Yes. And we all proved that we could run our organizations and, you know, run, you know, run everything differently. And it's, yeah, it's gone part of the way back, but it hasn't gone completely back. And, you know, we do know we can do things differently and that's okay.
It, it must have been, I mean, the politicians obviously under massive pressure during that time.
Yeah.
Almost making it up as you go along because never been here before. I mean, were you under that same sort of—
Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, it was very pressurized time. Time. And I mean, don't see it because Rishi Sunak was Chancellor at that point. And I think, you know, I think he has said this in public. I used to go around and see him occasionally. There was always a cricket bat there.
Oh no, he loves cricket.
And he used to come to the Oval in the evening often with his cousin, I think, and they used to just go in the nets. And he said it was just a huge relief of pressure.
Yes.
But he loves cricket. Yes, he does. I saw him one after he was Prime Minister, after he stepped down, there was a India-England One Day Series, uh, 2020 game in India, and he was on television in the box, and one of these Indian kids had got a century in no time, and I sent him a message, are you enjoying this?
No, he does, he does love cricket.
He loves it, and he's very, very, very, you know, he's very keen and dedicated. Yeah, yeah.
So when you get your committee together, yeah, every 6 weeks, isn't it? I mean, 9, 9 people.
Yeah.
That's as many as the Pakistan selection committee have, I think, for their test team. How do you get an agreement from 9 people? Is that difficult?
Well, we don't always agree, actually. In fact, most of the time, we don't all take the same views, and that's fine. We spend quite a lot of time deliberating and discussing it. The staff give us tremendous briefing. We've got brilliant staff at the bank, and that's one thing we're very lucky. So we get briefed by the staff, the staff will say, look, this is how we interpret what's gone on. So, you know, look, we did a decision last week.
Yes.
Thursday. And obviously a lot of the background to that is, well, you know, I mean, it's, we're just in a very, very volatile situation. You know, obviously, you know, Donald Trump had been saying that the conflict was going to end the next day for the last month. It looked like like it was coming to an end. So energy prices had gone up, they were starting to come down. So, you know, our job is we have to judge, well, you know, where are they going to go? How much damage has been done in the Gulf to the ability to ship and supply energy? And then what's going to be the longer-run impact on the economy here? Those are judgments we have to make ultimately.
So you held?
We held.
And is that with a view to bringing down— because we kind of promised two cuts, haven't we, this year?
Well, yeah, so effectively we have tightened in that sense. I think in a sense you're right because, you know, I thought we would probably make a couple of cuts this year. So, you know, we've sort of taken those off the table. Now, you know, energy prices have come down a lot. They're not fully back to where they were before it all started, but they've come down a lot actually, which is helpful. Inflation's actually— I mean, I have to say it's enormously frustrating because I really expected that we'd be back at the target, 2.0 target actually. And I think we would have been. We're not, but it's come in lower than we thought it would. Which is good. So our job now is to look forward and say we've always got to be forward-looking because we can't change inflation tomorrow. We change it in, you know, a year, two years' time. So, you know, how's it going to evolve with the current interest rate settings? So I think holding was the right thing to do this week. And, you know, we'll be back again in six weeks.
Yeah.
Do you sort of persuade people to what you want to be doing? Do you usually get your way? You're the governor.
I've always been in the majority, but I don't have to be. You know, Mervyn King, wasn't a couple of times. There's usually a fair amount of consensus in the committee, but then I'll get colleagues who are often on either side of it, and that's fine. It's absolutely fine because, you know, these are very difficult judgments. Reasonable people can disagree on these things.
Yeah, yeah. Why don't you sell the gold off? I mean, apparently we're broke as a country. You just go down below.
Most of it's not ours, actually.
How much is down there?
So we've got about 440,000 bars at at the moment down there. What does that equal? So that's about £550 billion.
Well, we'll just go and sell some of that.
Yeah, well, unfortunately it belongs to other people, but never mind. So we're the second largest store in the world, but almost equal to the first. The largest is the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, but both of us are about equal. We're pretty similar these days.
It is physically, I mean, you can go down in a lift or something.
I threw a bit of security.
A little bit of security. And there it is.
Yeah, and a bar these days is worth about, as I was saying, a million and a quarter, £1.25 million. So we worked out yesterday what a cricket ball, if you had the weight of a cricket ball, is, I know it's about—
5.5 ounces.
5.5 ounces, it'd be about £17,000. Hmm, price has gone up a lot.
Do you go down and sort of look at it stroke it or— I don't.
I go down every morning, I go down, I dust it every morning. Yeah, we occasionally, we go down, we take, occasionally we take some, we take visitors down occasionally, particularly if I've got sort of, you know, foreign people who've got their gold there, some of my central bank counterparts who say, can I see my gold? It must be, it is, it's funny, you know, it's funny sort of psychologically when you walk in for the first time you think, oh wow, you know, It's not all in one vault, but I mean, there's a lot in one vault.
Is it under the streets? I mean, it literally spreads all around.
Well, I can't tell you for security reasons. Oh, right.
Don't worry, I'm not going to go— No, no, it's just to say—
—on my pneumatic drill. If you've ever stood on the Central Line platform in Bank Station and wondered why it's so curved, it's going around our vaults, actually. But there's a great story which may or may not be— it may be apocryphal because it's a 19th century story that the governor of the day got a note, an anonymous note, and this is in our old building, not the current building, saying, "I will meet you in the vault at a certain time on a certain day." So they're all looking, so the story goes, totally sort of, "What's this? Can't be true." But then they decide, well, they just better go down there. And they do, the story goes, and they meet down there a guy. And he's a sewer man.
Right.
And he shows them that there is a way through. This is in the old—
so don't try this nowadays, it's a new building. Has it been closed off?
It's a new building, so don't try it, but this is going back in the 19th century.
Yes.
Now we don't know whether— it may be, it's a great story, whether it's apocryphal or true, we don't know.
No, no, I mean literally, but sitting on all of that, it must be quite extraordinary, and walking into that building. I know you've done it a few years now, but you still feel a buzz going in there?
Oh, every day, yeah, I mean it's a lovely building, No, that and watching— we have a banknote printing works in Essex. Go and watch banknotes being printed. It's a great thrill as well.
Wow. Well, I was going to ask you about that because aren't you choosing what's going on our next set of notes?
We are, yes.
Is that the royal we, or is that like you as a—
Well, we're actually getting the public to do it. So we, I mean, we choose the security side because that's very technical and it's so important because people do try to counterfeit the notes. But we decided that we're going to have to issue a new series because, say, because of the fact there's always people trying to counterfeit, we do have to change them periodically. So we decided to give the public a choice and said, well, what would you like? And we gave them some headings. Would you like sort of historical, more historical figures? Would you like wildlife? Would you like nature, you know, English countryside? I mean, you know, we're a nation of animal lovers.
We are.
It's probably—
It's a pretty obvious winner there.
No great that Wildlife won. So we're now doing a second consultation on, we've got 18, you can choose from 18 animals, birds, and fish, which ones you want. And please do participate, it's open till the first week of July.
So that's for 4, so only 4.
4, yeah, yeah. Yes.
So anything that particularly stands out from your mind?
Well, they're all sort of domestic wild animals. So we've got, you know, fox, owl, you know, bee, you know, pine marten. I've seen one of those recently.
Then who actually designs it then?
Well, then it'll be done. I mean, we have designers, but they have to work with, you know, we get the security features. We tend to work with outside commercial firms who produce security features because we have to move them on all the time.
And change the security features.
Yeah.
Right. So that it's not just a piece of, like, piece of wire that goes through it.
No, no, no. We've moved on to actually moving images. Um, which is sort of what they call sort of lenticular, uh, technology where you— if you, if you, you know, like kids used to have these things where if you tilt the note you can see an image moving.
Oh yes.
Which is, yeah, it's harder for people. It's quite hard to counterfeit that stuff, although people try.
Yeah, yeah. And what about cash? I mean, you're talking about the new notes and everything.
Yeah.
I mean, can you imagine a time when there, where there really is no cash?
Well, there's a great paradox in this. So we're all using it less. I mean, That's the case. I mean, you know, the number of payments made in cash has gone down. We obviously know how much we've got in issue because it's on our balance sheet. It's not gone down at all. So we've got about £90 billion of cash in issue, hasn't gone down at all.
Oh, really?
And it's interesting when I say to people, so just take that number, £90 billion, and divide it by the population of this country. I mean, it's not that simple, but if you believe that every one of us has got £1,000 of cash, well, I don't think we have actually.
No. I'll go and check under the—
Unless, I mean, maybe you have, I don't know.
No. Right, so there is cash out there.
There's a lot of it out there. But look, I mean, we, you know, our view is, look, we will provide cash as long as the British public want cash. And whenever we ask the British public, they want cash. And that's fine, it's good.
Yes, and yet a lot of businesses don't. I mean, our local pub, the one by Stewart Broad, is now a cashless pub.
Yeah.
I mean, there's more and more of this.
I think that's unfortunate. I mean, I know that it's, you know, there's a sort of cost element in it, but I think it's unfortunate. And people want cash for various reasons. I mean, some people want it, many people want it because it's a backup.
Yeah.
And they say, well, what happens if all these systems, you know, go down? And that did happen in Spain, you know, a couple of years ago. Some people use it as a budgeting tool and that's perfectly reasonable. So, you know, we will provide it as long as people want it and they do.
How do you get judged in your job at the end? How have you—
Regularly.
Well, rephrase it. How will people say, "Oh, he was a good governor," or, "Oh no, Andrew." I mean, what makes a good governor of the Bank of England?
Well, I mean, I would say, but I would, wouldn't I, that you have to deal with, you know, what comes your way. And frankly, I mean, it is true in my time we've had a lot of, frankly, shocks. In the world to deal with. You know, if you go back to an earlier period, it was much calmer. We have to deal what we have to deal with. I mean, you know, that's, that's, that's what we're here for.
Yeah. Do you feel— I mean, is it— again, is it like a legacy that, that you can leave in your time? Because you're on a set time. 8 years.
Yeah, yeah, I've got just under 2 years now.
So do— does that leave you with an opportunity of doing something for the good, as it were.
Well, I hope so. I mean, there are things we— there are changes we've made, certainly, and, you know, the institution has to constantly move on. As I said, you know, at the moment, I said earlier, at the moment, you know, one of the big things we're dealing with is, you know, the impact of artificial intelligence.
Yes, that does seem to be the big scary thing out there.
Very, very big thing, yeah.
Yeah, well, I'm glad that you and Nigel Farage wasn't actually for real.
No, no, no, no.
I still think— I think you'd come out— I think you'd come out on top.
Oh, I don't know. I don't—
let's not speculate. But yeah, but it's extraordinary. Right, well, it's over already.
Well, it's my pleasure.
No, Andrew, it's been all of our pleasure. Really lovely to have met you. Thank you for coming. And you clearly love cricket, and you can settle and enjoy your day. But thank you so much. And as long as you drop the interest rates in the next month, you can come back again.
Okay, right.
Lovely to have met you.
Lovely, Jonathan.
Thank you very much. Thank you for coming. And thank you for reminding me of that mad day. For two. Yeah, thank you. Just every now and then, you know, you just need a bit of a pickup, so thanks for doing that. Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England.
The TMS Podcast from BBC Radio 5 Live.
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