Businessman's car number plate taunts

A feuding mechanic taunted his magistrate neighbour with a car number plate calling him an “arsehole”.

Barrie Barker, 52, took the registration R 5OUL, altered the 5 to look like an ‘S’, then put it on an old banger outside JP Barry Roddis’s home.

He also implied Mr Roddis was a “grass” by displaying the plate GRA 55 R.



But the taunts backfired as Barker was given a five-month suspended jail sentence for harassment.

A district judge in Sheffield, South Yorks, heard how the feud began five years ago when Mr Roddis, 66, reported Barker for running a motors business at his Barnsley home.

Barker, who drives a hearse, has been arrested seven times after complaints by Mr Roddis and was given a three-year Asbo by magistrates in 2005.