A cunning plan
I had a cunning plan.

Step 1: set up a premium rate phone line. Have a recording on the end with a bit of hold music, some platitudes about how you're in a queue and to please hold on we'll get to you in just a minute, and some more music etc., designed to keep the caller on hold for as long as possible.

Step 2: buy a van.

Step 3: across the back of the van, plaster a sign saying "How's my driving?", and under that, the phone number of the premium rate line.

Step 4: drive around like a complete twunt.

Step 5: Profit!

I considered this plan to be genius, and shared it with a few friends on an internet message board.

Unfortunately, a year or three after I'd posted this idea online, someone else had a cunning plan, which went like this:

1. Copy my idea almost word for word.
2. Send it in to Dave Gorman's Radio 4 comedy show "Genius".
3. Get invited to be on the radio describing MY idea to my favourite comedian. Bastard.
(SonofRojBlake, Wed 11 Jul 2012, 7:16, 8 replies)

Do you think maybe it's not so much "cunning" as it is more "something other people have already also thought of"?

(Poppet some assembly required., Wed 11 Jul 2012, 7:17, closed)

he's such a prick

( Light In Chains maker of the ikea sofa, Wed 11 Jul 2012, 7:41, closed)

I'd agree the idea is somewhat obvious...
... and that maybe it was just coincidence...

if the wording he'd used when describing the idea wasn't so close to mine that it sounded like he was just reading it off the screen where I'd posted it.
(SonofRojBlake, Wed 11 Jul 2012, 8:42, closed)

I'm pretty sure that this idea actually originates with
whoever it was first started putting "how's my driving" stickers on vans. If not them, and it was a serious attempt to obtain road-user feedback, then credit for the idea must go to anyone who's ever seen a van with a "how's my driving" sticker, as it's pretty bloody obvious.

Also, Dave Gorman isn't very funny.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Wed 11 Jul 2012, 8:07, closed)

Normal how's my driving stickers...
usually have the number (with normal dialling code) of the driver's office on them. They're not (when I've noticed them) premium rate lines.
(SonofRojBlake, Wed 11 Jul 2012, 8:43, closed)

Really?
I must apologise for my slight against the haulage industry.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Wed 11 Jul 2012, 11:26, closed)

Don't apologise
No, they don't charge you premium rates. They do, however, want your mobile number and postal address so that they can bombard you with propaganda about how the poor benighted whorelage industry is woefully overtaxed etc. etc. and should be given free petrol for life, plus £200 for every cyclist they knock down.
(Guy Debord cette mauvaise réputation..., Wed 11 Jul 2012, 18:52, closed)

Maybe they nicked the idea from a Top Tip in Viz from c1990.

( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Wed 11 Jul 2012, 12:31, closed)