A poll has confirmed what most people know already – personalised number plates are vulgar, divisive and a complete waste of money. As my friend William Sitwell wrote in the Telegraph: ‘Having a personalised number plate is a self-proclaimed label of rich, smug self-satisfaction and bad taste.’ I could not agree more. The only problem is that I am the proud owner of a personalised number plate and wouldn’t part with it for all the money in the world – or, rather, let’s say it would have to be at least six figures with a two at the start.
That’s because 1CMG has been in my family for 60 years. Somehow, it came with my father’s company car in the 1960s, when he was chairman of Huntley & Palmers (a name that will mean nothing to younger readers but which was once the biggest biscuit manufacturer in the world). On retirement – and after H&P had been gobbled up by Nabisco and subsequently laid to rest – my father bought the car off the new owners, complete with its number plate. I inherited it (the number plate, not the car) when my father died in 1989 and it’s about to be put on my little second-hand Skoda Fabia, which I bought a few weeks ago for considerably less than what the number plate is worth.
Vulgarity comes in many forms, but I really don’t think I am guilty of it when it comes to 1CMG. For me, it’s a constant reminder of my dear father, a man who went down on his knees to pray every night before bed and did not possess a smidgeon of ‘smug self-satisfaction’.
When we were allowed out for lunch at my boarding prep school, I would stand by the window in the main hall and wait for 1CMG to come up the drive. The number plate represented security, home life and my mother’s Yorkshire pudding. Over the years, people have asked what 1CMG stands for. The answer is nothing at all – or anything you like. My mother liked to say it meant I Call Myself Gordy because my father’s Christian name was Gordon.
About 15 years ago, I was having lunch in a Somerset pub when a large man with a cockney accent and the demeanour of a racecourse bookmaker sidled up and said: ‘Is that your car outside with the 1CMG number plate?’
I said it was, after which he came up with: ‘I’ll give you £15,000 for it right now, guvnor – in cash.’
In America, they refer to number plates like mine as ‘vanity plates’. Which is quite understandable – but doesn’t quite describe my relationship to 1CMG. Sentimental plate might be more to the point.
Private number plates have been big business in the UK ever since the DVLA started selling them in 1989 – a deregulation of sorts and one that has proved highly lucrative. The DVLA raised £276 million for the government from personalised registrations in the last financial year. Apparently Alan Sugar has a number plate spelling out his initials, and I dare say plenty of professional footballers have gone down the personalised route on their Ferraris and Lamborghinis.
But my Skoda Fabia will look far smarter than any of them. I might even be tempted to feel smug about that.
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