Destination X
So, there I was, minding my own business, watching the BBC One o’clock news when a certain Rob Brydon, comedian and actor, appeared to talk about a brand new show due to be transmitted on BBC One in a prime-time slot. It involves a rather wonderful and super-stylish ‘bus’ (it’s really a coach). The show is called ‘Destination X’. The premise is simple: at each stage of this discombobulating new competition, which turns Europe into a board game, the contestants have to work out where they are.
Mr Brydon is the main man, sending the hapless contestants across the continent in windowless coaches. At the end of the show, each player has to guess where they are on a map after being given clues, some of which are false, at stops along the way. Whose guess is furthest away will be eliminated and out of the running to win the £100,000 prize at the final destination.
Here Come The Double Deckers
As I admired the wonderful interior of the coaches used on the show, it got me thinking back to all the TV shows that involved buses from my earliest years. Starting off with ‘Here Come the Double Deckers’, a children’s TV show from the 1960s. It followed the adventures of seven Cockney sparrow kids who used an old red double-decker bus in a scrapyard as their clubhouse. The show featured a great deal of slapstick comedy and some very catchy songs, including the theme, which I can still recall today. Naturally, it included various escapades with ‘Martians’, ghosts and haunted houses. All great fun when you’re seven; of course, they’re all pensioners now.
On The Buses
Arguably the most famous of all TV shows was ‘On The Buses’, which followed the adventures of bus driver Stan Butler and his cheeky chappie best mate and conductor, Jack (played by Bob Grant). The show aired from 1969 until 1973. It chronicled Stan’s and Jack’s constant quests to do two things: first, chase as many of the pretty clippies (lady bus conductors) as humanly possible in every episode; and second, try to constantly outwit the villain of the piece, Inspector Cyril ‘Blakey’ Blake, who was forever attempting to report the two for various wrongdoing. Of course, Blakey, with his moustache, was the hapless victim of their pranks. It was hugely popular at the time, with the key actors becoming national treasures. On reflection, it was crude and demeaning, but it was a product of its age and showed an era when the good old bus was at the heart of public transport.
Coach Trip
More recently, ‘Coach Trip’ on Channel 4 began in 2005 and eventually disappeared in 2023, having had various guises, but one constant of the show was the chirpy and amiable tour guide, Brendan Sheerin. The idea was that between four and seven couples of tourists undertook a coach tour, mostly around continental Europe, lasting anywhere between twenty and fifty days. Sporadically, a vote would take place in which each couple voted for the pair they least enjoyed travelling with, and the pair with the most votes was then shown either a yellow or a red card. In between, the pairs would take part in a multitude of activities at popular tourist destinations, from local dancing to wine tasting. It proved very popular, and several celebrity (I use that term loosely!) episodes were made, although I’m not sure whether it made coach trips more or less appealing, given the unpopular voting-off, which naturally led to tension and ill-feeling; the very opposite of what you want on a coach holiday.
Speed
My final homage has to be the classic action film ‘Speed’ (1994). If you’ve not seen it, it revolves around a city bus in Los Angeles rigged with a bomb that will detonate if the bus drops below 50 mph. LAPD officer Keanu Reeves must prevent the explosion, working closely with another passenger, Sandra Bullock, to keep the bus moving at a safe speed. It’s a very exciting watch.
As they say, nostalgia isn’t what it used to be…
Written by Austin Birks
