‘Telling someone they have won £1m is always a good day’

Many of us have sat with a coffee at a service station during a long drive, pretending that we are a secret agent on a world-saving mission.

But while for most this is purely the stuff of fantasy, for an Agent Million, this happens almost every month.

There are five Agent Millions located across the UK – undercover operatives headhunted by National Savings & Investments to tell Premium Bond holders they have won the £1m jackpot each month. “I often sit there and look at the people around me and I think, ‘ No one has any idea who I am.’ It’s really exciting,” Agent Million says.

This secret agent is a woman, but that’s the only clue offered about her identity during the interview. The role is even concealed from friends and family for fear of identifying a winner and placing them at risk because of their new-found wealth.

The only people who get to know who the Agent Million is are the customers who win, as they are invited to check their ID, and their manager.

She has been doing the job for four and a half years and has paid out more than £20m in prizes to winners.

The first Premium Bonds prize draw was held in June 1975, when one NS&I saver won the top prize of £ 1,000. Today, Ernie, the machine that generates the winning numbers, selects two £1m winners each month. To date, it has paid out more than 654m prizes worth more than £28bn. Agent Million says she had wanted to do the job for years before she was headhunted for it: “I didn’t realise they had been watching me for quite a while.”

She says the role is highly sought after at NS& I, coming as it does with the adrenaline and excitement of telling winners their lives have changed overnight. The agent has to prepare carefully for each trip, planning her travel and accommodation, as well as plotting routes to the winners’ homes and coming up with back-up plans.

There are rules about what the secret prize givers are allowed to wear when they go undercover, so they remain incognito. She says: “I want to look presentable. But I don’t want to look like a salesperson. I don’t want to look like I am bringing someone £1m either.”

The elusive worker says she gets very nervous and usually can’t eat on the day.

She says: “Invariably, I can’t eat before I go to someone’s house. If I have a long way to go, I’ll have some breakfast in the morning, but until I’ve done what I’ve gone to do, I can’t eat.

“When I am about 10 minutes away from where I am going, the tummy goes. It’s all butterflies. It’s always unique, every single visit is unique.”

She often has to drive to remote locations, she says, recalling one memorable trip to the Scottish Highlands.

“I went to find this house, but it didn’t have a house number, it had a name. It was in a remote part of the Highlands, and none of the houses had numbers, it was all names,” she says.

“Then my phone dropped. I ended up having to go into a local business and asked if I could use their landline to call my manager.”

After driving around in circles for hours, she finally found the house she had been looking for.

“Later on, the winner said, ‘Oh, I don’t know what we’re going to do with the money,’ and I said, ‘I know what you can do, you can put a house name on your property so we can find you!’”

It’s not always easy to get inside. One sunny Sunday afternoon, she says, a gentleman refused to let her in to speak to his wife. “One time I knocked on a door on a Sunday afternoon. It was a full door with no glass in it but there was a glass panel on the side,” she says.

She adds: “The gentleman answered the door. It was his wife I was going to see, so I asked for her, and he looked me up and down and said, ‘No, no, I’ve seen your kind before,’ and closed the door on me.

“I am standing there and I’m thinking, ‘Oh.’ But I can see him peeking through the glass. He opened the door again. I used a little bit of charm and asked for his wife again.

“It’s all about staying calm, knowing that you are there for the right reasons, and knowing what you are doing is going to change their life,” she says.

The man in question was very apologetic afterwards, she says, once he realised he had nearly turned away £1m.

Once she knocks on a winner’s door, they can call an NS&I hotline to verify her identity, to prove she’s not a fraudster. “I know even when it is a bit bumpy, and they are not sure about letting you in at the beginning, that it’s going to end in tears, hugs and happiness. That it is going to be a good day,” she says.