UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt was channeling Margaret Thatcher in his budget statement last week. “It’s time to get Sid investing again,” he said.

The comment was a throwback to a marketing campaign that ran almost 40 years ago when the Iron Lady was in charge. The government had agreed to sell its stake in British Gas and was keen to encourage retail investors — like the fictional everyman named Sid — to participate. “If you see Sid, tell him,” its ads exhorted. Around 1.5 million did. The privatization, plus those of British Telecom, BP and others, enticed people into the stock market and by the end of the decade the number of individuals owning shares had increased threefold to 9 million by 1989 from 3 million in 1979.