Honestly, the NHS number itself isn't all that important - you are assigned one automatically when you register with a GP, but you will probably never need to actually use it... it's more to keep track of your records on the NHS computer system than anything else.
I was apparently assigned an NHS number the day I was born, but I didn't even know there was such a thing until I was 24 and I found this forum - no one had ever told me what an NHS number was or that I had one, and I've never needed to use it.
When I changed GP surgeries recently, I called my old surgery to ask for my NHS number and they told me I didn't need it and wouldn't even tell me what it was... they just said that as long as I give the new surgery my name, date of birth and the address of the old surgery, they could just look it up
. Sure enough, when I got my next prescription at the new surgery, my NHS number was printed on the top.