A special set of stamps featuring Olympic gold medallists have gone on sale. Andrew Hammond, managing director of Royal Mail stamps, spoke to the BBC about the stamps just after they went on sale.

Andrew Hammond and Ben Brown (2nd August 2012)

Ben Brown began by asking Andrew how he'd managed to get the stamps printed so quickly.

Andrew Hammond: Well, it's a monumental effort that we've been working on for about two years now. So as soon as we have a gold medal win, the team of designers have images coming through from Getty. So we're sat in our office in London, watching every race. And as soon as we get those images we work the best one. And what we've done is tried to get action shots from the actual events. And as soon as we've got the right image we photoshop it, crop it, and then get it off to the printers once we've had relevant approvals ...

Mr Hammond went on to confirm that Royal Mail would make a stamp for every Team GB gold medal win. He said it's the first time the Royal Mail has featured living individuals, as opposed to teams, on their stamps.

The Royal Mail's Bradley Wiggins and Helen Glover/Heather Stanning stamps also featured on Newsround that afternoon -

Hayley: It's not only medals that our winners get. They also get the honour of this - one of their very own official stamps. ...

Newsround - Thursday 2nd August 2012 - 5pm BBC Two