TO 55 ER5

There was a long running Top Tip in the comic Viz which said that instead of buying expensive personalised number plates, why not change your name instead. It was signed 'PW02 TBB' or similar.
 I was reminded of that by a Bentley which keeps driving past our office. It has the registration HA5 1 LEG.
 I imagine the owner is a one legged millionaire. Or it's a reference to something obscure. Or perhaps the driver bought the car with the number plate already on it and has since had his leg amputated voluntarily.
 Then I was at the football and saw the number plate YDO 8 AFC.
 Now I am among possibly one per cent of the population who realises that stands for 'Yiddo hates Arsenal Football Club' as Yiddo is the nickname for Spurs supporters.
 But it seems an awful lot of trouble to go to for the sake of such an obscure reference.
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My 12-year-old son is getting awfully excited. Apparently there's a new game coming out - Gran Turismo or something. He's pre-ordered it so that it arrives on the day it comes out and, after six months, that day is about now I believe.
I am not sure that there was anything at all that I got THAT excited about at the age of 12. Not a new release by Sweet, not a new episode of The Persuaders or the latest edition of Look In magazine.
There were moments of course. My gran got me the autographs of the cast of Crossroads (one of them came in her pub) and I was a ballboy at a match between a Jewish charity team and a celebrity XI which included Denis Waterman and someone called Steve Bent who I hadn't heard of then and still haven't.
But I don't think I was ever one of those who wanted something on the first day it came out. A few years later I can remember that boys from school would go to a record shop at lunchtime to buy the latest Jam single on the day it came out. But I wasn't that bothered then and I'm still not now.
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Actually there were some things that got me - and a lot of boys my age - quite excited in the early to mid-1970s. Unobtainable women. Ann-Margret covered in baked beans in Tommy, Britt Ekland before she had her lips done, dancing in The Wicker Man (and I know now it was a body double) Suzi Quatro, an actress called Jenny Runacre, and, of course, the magnificent Ingrid Pitt.
 Ms Pitt died this week aged just 73 having packed several lifetimes into just one.
 You can keep your RPatz and Buffy. They are not a patch on Hammer, Ingrid and Vampire Lovers.
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This is all a bit morbid but I wanted to pay tribute to Roger Duffield of the Daily Mirror newsdesk who died this week aged just 53. In my role as boss of a press agency, I have spent the best part of two decades trying to get stories past Roger and into, first, Today newspaper and latterly the Mirror. He was always fair, always honest - sometimes brutally so - and we always got paid when he was marking up. He will be missed by many but most of all by his family.
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I'm not sure I've still got the stamina to stay up till the early hours in front of the TV but I've paid for Sky and the Ashes don't come round that often so let's see.
G'day and g'night....Solly