'Diddy' David Hamilton and His Personalised Number Plates

« previous page

"I won the plate for £5,000, which was about what I expected to pay, but someone else was bidding against me over the phone. It was probably Ken!” The plate was the perfect match for David's red Mini Cooper. It's now on 'DiddyMobile' number two - another Mini, this time in 'Volcanic Orange'.

Proving that small is beautiful, David says that the car and personalised number plate together have always attracted affectionate comments. “It looks cute, and people can't help saying so. It's been a great publicity tool for me over the years,” he says, “I never hear jealous remarks which might happen if it were on something like a 4 x 4. I often find notes on the windscreen, asking if I will sell it. One woman who wanted it was called Diddy McDonald.

"When I was working for a radio station that belonged to Harrods' owner Mohammed Al Fayed, a security guard told me that a man across the street had been admiring my number plate. I went over to speak to him and it turned out to be Didier Deschamps, a footballer for Chelsea at the time. I didn't know his name then, so asked him what it was. He replied, Didier, so I said, I'm Diddier than you! He laughed and asked how much I wanted for the plate. Off the top of my head I said £20k. He came straight back with the reply, ‘Only?’ So with a bit of quick thinking, I added, and £20k for the back one! Didier returned to France soon after and I wasn't ready to part with my plate at that time. If I was offered silly money for it, I think I would find it hard to refuse. Perhaps Didier Drogba (another Chelsea player) might be interested..."

David says that if he did ever want another private registration, it would have to be one that was funny. “I don't understand people who criticise personalised number plates - they're missing the point completely - they're a bit of fun. At least I know where to search for one,” he says, looking at the Regtransfers magazine, “the best one I saw recently was DAD 150K - Dad is OK - fantastic."

David began his career writing a weekly column for Soccer Star magazine, at the age of 15. When he left school, he became an office boy for ATV. and after he had an article published in the TV Times, he was offered a job writing promotion scripts for ATV.'s announcers. By 18, David had written a series called Portrait of a Star for the ITV network. His new found career was interrupted by two years National Service in the RAF.

In 1959, he found himself in Cologne, Germany, working on the British Forces Network where his first broadcasting role was reading the football results. He persuaded the network to let him run his own rock 'n' roll show, Hey There.

continued »

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7