What price indestructible banknotes? Ipswich man James Hayward couldn’t believe what happened to the £5 note in his trouser pocket.

When he took it out it was in two pieces - something he thought couldn’t happen.

“It was as if it had broken rather than torn,” he said of his fiver. Mr Hayward added he will be taking it into the bank to exchange it for a whole one.

When the polymer banknotes were launched in 2016, the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, dipped a new-look fiver into a chicken curry to demonstrate its strength.

The new-look notes were estimated to last around five years, two-and-a-half times as long as old-style paper notes. Since the fiver’s launch, paper £10 notes have also been replaced with polymer versions.

Mr Carney also said at the launch the new notes would resist being folded in wallets or scrunched in pockets better than paper ones.