If the industry needed an advert in human form for the job of a driver, it couldn’t do much better than to use the career of Paul Townend.
An extraordinary 46-year stint which has enabled him to meet celebrities such as James Brown and work on President Reagan’s visit to meet the Queen has changed his life, he says. He has enjoyed nearly every minute of it and, aged 66, has no plans to retire.
Now he drives on one of the most scenic bus routes in the country, the iconic 36 between Leeds and Ripon, and the man who drove Routemasters in their heyday is now poised to make the move to battery-electric when Harrogate Bus Company introduces its new vehicles on the service next month.
Paul says he didn’t have a great start in life, brought up in foster care due to his mother dying young.
After leaving school with no qualifications and initially working on a farm, aged 20, he saw an advert for bus conductor vacancies at London Country in Swanley.
However, a major hurdle for him was that his maths let him down — long before electronic ticketing, of course.
I was sitting in the green room with Oasis one side of me and James Brown the other – Paul Townend
But he explains how getting into the industry was effectively how he learned numeracy. He says: “The guy who was training me said, ‘Do you want this job?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I do.’ He said, ‘I’ll teach you to add up and take away properly and you can take the test at the end of the week.’
“He taught me more in four days than I learned in school. And he said that it’s because you wanted to do it. That act of kindness changed my life for ever.” When he turned 21 and was able to drive, he operated RMCs on the 477 service.
Memorable trips
Later, after a couple of years driving route 53 for London Transport, in the early 1980s, he began to drive coaches, working for Kent operator West Kingsdown.
One of his most memorable jobs was driving the American press for President Reagan’s trip to the UK in 1982.
He recalls being part of the entourage when the President went horse riding with the Queen at Windsor.
“I was standing, I suppose, 20ft away from him and the Queen and, being a young lad from a tiny village in Kent, it was quite remarkable,” says Paul.
He also well remembers driving from London to Moscow, visiting Auschwitz and Belsen on the way. “It was quite an adventure,” he says.
“My boss said not to break down because, if you do, you’ve had it. When you got to a border, you had to work out how much diesel you were going to use and buy coupons.
“You had a person with you as a guide to make sure you didn’t go where you weren’t supposed to. It was an unbelievable trip. Auschwitz was a really heartbreaking place to go but really interesting.”
West Kingsdown used to specialise in Catholic tours and Cardinal Basil Hume — “a lovely man” — was among his passengers a few times.
I left school with nothing, but I took my test and being a PCV driver just changed my life for ever – Paul Townend
As well as driving the Singapore National Choir, the RAF Central Band and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, he went to a pick-up in London one day to find his passengers were the singer Gabrielle and her crew for the Radio 1 Roadshow in the Lake District.
Paul says he has visited every country in Europe but, asked about his favourite trip, he responds: “I’ve got to say Rome and Sorrento as that’s where I met my missus!” His wife, Sue, was one of the travellers on his coach on that job in 1999.
Oasis and James Brown
Getting married took him and his career up to Yorkshire.
Much of his work there involved taking music bands and singers on tour with a double-decker and 16 beds on board. Among them was Jamaican reggae singer Beres Hammond.
He also got to take lighting technicians to the Glastonbury Festival one year. He says: “I was sitting in the green room with Oasis one side of me and James Brown the other. It was quite surreal for a country bumpkin like me — I left school with nothing and I’m doing that sort of stuff.”
He also transported cast and crew for TV shows including Heartbeat and Emmerdale and is delighted this allowed him to meet many actors such as Suranne Jones.
His work also included transporting professional football teams. He notes: “Back when I was in Kent, although they did want to have the big team coaches, they weren’t as flash as they are now.”
Back on the buses
After stints with Aztecbird and Eddie Brown Tours, five years ago, he returned to buses for Harrogate Bus Company.
For someone who had already felt so fortunate in his career, landing a job driving on the flagship 36, famed for the eye-catching scenery and buses with luxurious interiors, must have been the only apt next step.
He is full of praise for the Transdev Blazefield subsidiary. He says: “I love the job. I’ve told them I don’t want to retire.”
Looking back on his career, he says: “I left school with nothing, but I took my test and being a PCV driver just changed my life for ever. I’ve been really lucky, I’ve worked with some great people and still do.
“I think young people today need to realise that, if they take their test and get a PCV licence, they can have a job for life if they look after it. I left school with not a lot and I’ve done all these things and I’ve met all these people.”
It’s the people that have made the job, he reveals, adding that there have been very few low points: “I’ve done a couple of football [spectator] trips I’d like to forget about but, in general, the people I’ve met have been great.
“Perhaps we drivers are invisible, but people rely on us and the reason we are invisible is because people trust us. You get on a bus and you just expect it to take you from A to B safely.”
Changing times
The man who started his career almost in the On The Buses era is looking forward to being able to drive the first electric buses on the 36 this summer.
“I was there at the end of the RMCs and now it’s gone full circle and I’m at a garage where electrics are taking over,” he says.
The other possible future development is driverless buses, but he does not believe it will happen in time for him to lose the job he loves to automation.
“But I’m sure it’ll happen one day,” he says. “If you’d have said 46 years ago that one day you’d be driving an electric bus, you wouldn’t have believed them.”
Indeed, despite his longevity in his vocation, he appears happy with what has become a very different industry — from the pay to the requirements of passengers.
He says: “The bus world is moving very quickly all of a sudden — the wages and conditions have got a lot better. When I was conductor on the RMC, you couldn’t have prams or wheelchairs.”
Not even Driver Certificate of Professional Competence (CPC) — a scourge for some older drivers — bothers him. “I personally think the CPC is a good thing because people think they know it all and they don’t.
“Things change, you learn about diversity, what you can or can’t say. Passengers are wearing badges so you know what the situation is. At the last one, we were doing a bit of sign language as well and learning about the different assistance dogs.”
In many ways, it is truly a world away from when he began. Thanks to electronic ticketing, he no longer even needs the maths that the job taught him 46 years ago. “Forty-six years seems a long time, but it’s gone so quickly,” he says. “I would not change a thing.”
