I'd like to enable Num Lock (i.e. numeric keypad LED lights and numeric keypad active) at boot time.

I'm running Hardy 8.04, keyboard is BTC9000 set to BTC9000 in xorg.conf.

Numlockx is installed via synaptic, I have also created a user .xinitrc in my home directory

cat ~/.xinitc
!#/bin/bash
numlockx &

file permissions are 755 and if numlock is off and I execute
~/.xinitrc

the .xinitrc file does enable num lock.

Why isn't my .xinitrc loaded at boot?
Thanks in advance