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 manuf

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