'The World's Most Famous
Bus Driver'
by Tommy Steele
ISBN 1-900467-10-5 Price £8.99.
Softback. 148.5 x 210 mm (approximately) 128 pages

'The World's Most Famous
Bus Driver' may be ordered from:
Tommy Steele
77 Homelake House
Station Road
Parkstone
Poole
Dorset
BH14 8UD
UK
Telephone: 01202 743667

Price £8.99 plus £1.50 p&p (second class).
Please add £1.00 to cover post & packing for orders outside the UK.
Please make cheques/POs payable to
'T Steele'.

Tommy Steele - just like his famous namesake - has been singing to audiences for more than two decades. But, unlike the top entertainer, he hasn’t been performing to huge crowds at the London Palladium. Tommy is most famous for being Dorset’s one and only singing bus driver. He achieved national fame in the press and on TV and radio, after being stopped from serenading his passengers by his bus bosses. When newspapers spoke out on his behalf, a change of heart took place and Tommy was able to resume singing tuneful melodies on his routes around Bournemouth.
Encompassing 21 years experience, this fascinating book is dedicated to bus crews and their passengers everywhere. The book describes what it was like to work and travel by bus, before one-man operation took away the camaraderie which existed between the bus crews themselves and sometimes even their passengers! Packed with anecdotes and personal stories about life on the buses, it will appeal to anyone who has travelled by bus and still has a sense of humour!

Tommy says, "Why write books about being on the buses? I said books, because when I started my training as a conductor, a member of staff said I should write a book about the job, as nobody really knows what it is like to drive a bus. So, I started a card index of stories – both humorous and sad – of my experiences as a conductor, crew bus driver, then a one-person bus driver and coach driver. As the number of entries in my index increased, I began to realise that instead of a single book, I had enough material for an omnibus. As I write this, in front of me is a copy of the Bournemouth Daily Echo of Thursday 10 August 2000. One headline reads, ‘Wilts & Dorset cannot run a full service because of a shortage of bus drivers, despite offering over £6 per hour!’. Why? Turn to the ‘Letters’ columns of the same newspaper and you will read ‘Bus Ride to Hell!’.
Let me take you dear readers back to the FUN days of bus driving!"

Tommy is President of the East Dorset Speakers Club and Speaker of the Year, enthralling audiences all over the country with his recollections. His talk ‘It’s only the passenger that runs on time’ is very funny and deals with the humorous side of bus conducting, bus driving and one-man operations (a lot of stories not in this book). His speech ‘Taken for a ride’ deals with the funny side of coach driving and even includes what coach drivers think of their passengers!

This book is the result of many requests to put these stories into writing.

Like buses, where you wait for ages then two come together - another book is in preparation . . .