THE MIDDLE LANE
Please stop banning the personalised plates we might all enjoy, requests TGTV’s Sam Philip
The DVLA was recently hit with a Freedom of Information request ordering it to publish a full list of banned numberplates for the March ‘ ’ cycle all plates deemed at risk of offending right minded citizens The investigative journalists behind this request? Plates Less a website selling personalised numberplates
Now personally I’d rather pop my most delicate extremities in an air fryer than drive a car with a personalised plate But hey it’s a free country and if you’re the sort of person fine with blowing a month’s salary on a combination of letters and numbers that vaguely resemble your name provided you a squint heavily and b cannot spell then knock yourself out
Unless that is your name happens to vaguely resemble one of the or so recently prohibited combos Because the DVLA did indeed publish its banned list in full thus rather undermining the ‘not causing offence’ principle and it is indeed nowhere near as offensive as you’d hope sorry
Sure some of the list could be construed as at least mildly rude GO HEL SH GGD BO LOC etc But plenty of the ‘offensive’ plates are to put it mildly a stretch For example GB DWN I’ve spent plenty of time looking at that one and unless a ‘bzadwn’ is some new slang for a proper wrong ’un I believe we’re meant to decode it as ‘Great Britain down’
“WE ARE UNITED IN THIS UNIVERSAL TRUTH: REVERSE BURPS ARE FUNNY”
Squinting my way through the list I felt intensely sorry for the poor DVLA lackey responsible for studying every alphanumeric combo for potential offence “But hang on If the car lands upside down in a ditch and every other character on its numberplate happens to spontaneously combust an innocent passerby might misread it as ‘bum’”
Here’s the banned plate that really got me AF ART Yes we all know what it nearly says But why ban it? Would anyone’s day truly be made worse by catching sight of a combination of letters and numbers loosely nodding to a natural bodily function? “Margaret how frightful! I’d entirely forgotten the human tendency to emit intestinal gas until I spotted that plate This is even worse than that time we spotted a sign to a public toilet”
This nation doesn’t agree on much But we are united in this universal truth reverse burps are funny so long as you don’t have the misfortune to be trapped in an elevator with a particularly vicious example If a few delicate souls out there might be lightly offended by spotting AF ART or UF ART or FF ART or any of the other flatus related plates on the banned list surely their pain would be hugely outweighed by the joy experienced by our nation’s puerile children and puerile children at heart?
Come on the DVLA Regular personalised numberplates are bad enough Don’t make it worse by banning the ones we might actually enjoy
Sam Philip is the TopGear telly script editor and a mag and web regular for over 15 years. He also enjoys racing classic Ferraris, restoring air-cooled 911s, and lying about his interests
Need more of the TopGear telly show in your life? All episodes are now free to stream on BBC iPlayer