• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Inspired by the newt-owning mayor, we decided to measure the performance of a range of buses by racing them against each other at Lydden Hill in Kent, a one-mile track with as many frills as Ryanair. I hooked up with our Australian director, Owen, to plan the shoot. ‘O’ was a laid-back surfer dude from Sydney with floppy hair, big Ray Bans and a generous pearly smile. He was chilled, but took no bullshit.

The buses were heavily modified with roll cages, impact structures and toughened Perspex windows to cocoon the drivers when battle commenced. I gave them all the once-over and we decided to weld some extra mounts for the seats where they joined the rust-eaten floors. Our range of relics included one double-decker, a single-deck coach, a Hopper and two Bendies. Now we just needed some nuts behind the wheel.

Touring car drivers sprang to mind. They were game for a laugh, didn’t take themselves too seriously and had the kind of car crash control that made great telly.

In between jumping in and out of different buses to make up the numbers, I cued the drivers with specific moves. Since none of us had drifted a bus before, I climbed aboard Hammond’s Bendy to lay down a marker. She was hardly top of the range. The electrics were dead, so we kick-started the thing by thumping the battery with a sledgehammer. I fired the engine and waited several minutes to build enough pressure in the system to release the air brakes and move forward.

Hammond climbed aboard and took a ringside seat just behind my left shoulder, one hand on the steel passenger pole that joined floor to ceiling. Our combined mental age: about twelve.

‘Go on, go on,’ he gurgled, his liquid brown eyes glinting with excitement from beneath his Tina Turner styled mullet. It was times like these I most enjoyed with RH.

I lifted the parking brake lever and arced it forward, taking up the slack on the footbrakes as I selected drive. Owen gave us the all clear and I floored it. I had no idea how the beast would react, but I had a basic plan.

Once the needle touched 50mph I wrenched the giant steering wheel as far to the left as I could, winding three turns of lock. The bus lolled to the left and shook on its tired suspension, then I swung the wheel fully in the opposite direction to the accompaniment of muted expletives from my pole-dancing passenger. The rear half of the vehicle switched direction and pivoted to catch up at twice the rate of the front.

I repeated the process with every ounce of my strength and the bus began to drift. I kept the steering hard right and headed off the tarmac on to the dirt section used for rallycross. Loose pebbles clattered around the wheel arches as 12 tonnes of tin careered through the curve. I turned to check how close the rear section was to the Armco barrier bordering the perimeter. Bloody close. I kept my foot on the gas. Hammond was bursting at the seams with laughter. Mission accomplished.

‘This is such a crap job sometimes,’ I said.

‘Terrible … puerile. Days like this you really have to drag yourself out of bed in the morning.’ RH slapped my shoulder and climbed off.

The other drivers strapped themselves into their respective cockpits, poised for action. We released them with strict orders of ‘no contact’ until we had some shots in the can. The days of the car football free-forall were long gone. The boys notched up their response levels precisely in line with our instructions, but we knew something pithy was brewing.

Anthony Reid had joined the regular band of reprobates. At 50 years of age he struck you as a quaint, well-spoken gent, with neat facial features to match the ever present vintage racing cap. I’ve held lucid conversations with Reid, some of which have even bordered on the intelligent, but remain convinced that the compartment inside his head where his brain should be contains some kind of dark matter instead. Reid was lapping his little white coach faster than anyone.

‘OK, fellas, that’s enough of the boring shit,’ Owen twanged over the radio. ‘Get stuck in.’

The northernmost