The Sunday Times April 10, 2022 19Travel TravellCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC CCoachesCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooaches
S
everal things
happened in 1972.
The Oasis frontman
Liam Gallagher was
born in Manchester;
former regal frontman Edward
VIII died in Paris; Britain
showed typical restraint by
winning absolutely nothing at
the Winter Olympics in Japan;
and a few dozen people
climbed aboard the inaugural
National Express coach service
from London to Nottingham.
Once the travelling party
had settled in their seats and
finished sharing remarks
about the patriotic livery and
the prospect of what they
would find in the Midlands,
they were served cups of tea at
25mph by a chirpy hostess.
Cries of “Ooh lovely” rang out
more or less constantly, until
they hit traffic near Wembley.
A one-way ticket for that
journey 50 years ago would
have set you back £1.25. That
might sound like a snip,
but £1.25 in 1972
equates to about
£14 in today’s
dosh, which
is actually
several pounds
more than the
amount that
National Express
charges for the
same journey now.
Little did those early
pioneers know, therefore,
that relative to equivalent fare
prices in 2022 they were being
royally ripped off — we’ll
forgive them their naivety.
Over the subsequent
decades National Express
went from strength to
strength, with only the
occasional setback and slice
of misfortune. Today its
network links more than 540
locations across the country
— a range that allows the
company to serve tens of
thousands of passengers a day.
But as impressive as those
passenger stats are, just thinkhow many more passengers
might have been squeezed
in had the coach operator
not gone in for modern
comforts such as legroom.
Passengers are more than
mere statistics, of course.
They are people, and people
are stories — sometimes more
than you’d like them to be.
About ten years ago I travelled
the length of England next to
a lady called Rosalind, who
after a quick snooze on the M1
set about telling me the story
of her love life. It would last
hundreds of miles and involve,
by my reckoning, several
hundred brief encounters.
And then sometimes
National Express customers
aren’t just full of stories,
they’re also full of new
customers. Just before
Christmas in 2015, at the
Victoria coach station in
London, National Express
staff were called on to help
to deliver a baby after
the mother went
into labour while
waiting to
board a coach
to Yeovil.
Some months
later the
company
decided to
track her down
to offer her a
year’s free travel —
presumably by way of
thanking her for having the
child in the waiting lounge
rather than on the bus.
They duly found her and
discovered that she had
named the sooner-than-
expected arrival Victoria,after the circumstances of her
birth. The story can’t fail to
bring to mind Jack Worthing,
the protagonist of Oscar
Wilde’s The Importance of
Being Earnest, and his
discovery in a handbag at
Victoria rail station circa 1895.
Brent Humphries wasn’t
among those who helped to
deliver Victoria on that fateful
day, but it wouldn’t have come
as a surprise were that the
case. He has been on the
company’s books for more
than 40 years, and in 2015
was crowned best coach driver
in the UK after completing a
parlous obstacle course in less
than a minute without spilling
a drop of Ribena.
And Humphries isn’t only
handy behind the wheel —
on one trip, from Swansea
to London, he was required
to provide emergency medicalsupport. “We’d just left the
station when a young lady
began choking,” he recalled.
“She had swallowed her
tongue and had stopped
breathing. I pulled over and
assisted her partner in giving
her first aid. I called an
ambulance, which took her to
hospital. I was pleased to hear
that she was discharged that
day and still managed to catch
the West End show that she
had tickets for.” Mamma mia!
Speaking of things musical,
it would be remiss of me not
to mention the song National
Express by the Divine Comedy,
the lyrics of which centre on a
jolly hostess selling crisps and
tea on one of the company’s
coaches. According to the
song’s narrator she struggles
to proceed down the aisle onBen Aitken looks at what
has kept the wheels on the
bus turning for five decades
EXPRESSTURNS
account of her bottom being
the size of a small country.
National Express abolished
on-board catering in 2000 —
a development that must go
down as a low point in the
company’s history. Other
dark days include the time
in 1988 when it was cruelly
plucked from the nourishing
caress of the state and handed
over to the private sector.
Also less than ideal was the
launch in 2004 of NXTV. The
idea was nice — small
monitors that descended
from on high to show old
episodes of A Touch of Frost
starring David Jason — but the
timing sadly wasn’t: it was
introduced at about the time
that Apple released the iPod.
The service was phased out
after less than two years; it issaid that Jason is still in a mood
about the whole thing.
A more positive occasion
came in 2009, when the new
Birmingham coach station was
opened by Fabio Capello, then
the England football manager.
By all accounts he was lavish in
his praise of National Express
— and he should know a good
coach when he sees one.
Also undeniably positive
is the manner in which the
coaches have steadily become
safer over the years. The
present fleet is a junior bunch
— most less than three years
old, each fitted with collision-
avoidance technology and
Alcolocks, requiring drivers to
pass a breathalyser test before
they can start the engine. This
is a far cry from how things
were in the 1970s — by the
company’s admission, in 1972
concern for passenger safety
“wasn’t always obvious”.
Another thing that National
Express can boast of these
days is punctuality. I wish I
could do likewise. On those
rare occasions, like today,
when I’ve somehow contrived
to arrive at Victoria with ample
time to spare, it’s always a treat
to sit and watch the hundreds
of people with their bags,
sandwiches and takeaway
drinks, waiting for passage to
Oxford, Cardiff or Dover.
It’s the urban equivalent
of watching the sea —
profound somehow, but also
everyday and ordinary. Not
unlike the National Express.Ben Aitken is the author of
The Gran Tour: Travels with
my Elders (Icon Books; £14.99)Fabio Capello
approved — and
he knows a good
coach when
he sees oneNATIONAL
MICHAEL MOLLOY/NATIONAL EXPRESS; FRANK HOENSCH/GETTY IMAGES
Neil Hannon of the Divine
Comedy sang about about the
joys of travelling with National
Express; coach parties in 1990,
right, and 1975, far right; below,
a 1982 ad; bottom, on the road