London Bus and Railway Interiors Awards

Today the UK Bus Awards will honour the commitment to quality and innovation in the bus industry. You'll be pleased to hear there's a special category for London promoted by TfL which "focus especially on the challenging task of running reliable and high-quality services in the capital." So there will be awards for Best London Bus Garage, London Bus Service Quality Award and Top London Bus Driver.


The last category will be a major challenge as I rarely meet a cheerful bus driver (one of my brothers is a London bus driver so I speak from experience) and they seem to take pleasure in charging past stops when you're running for a bus. Another skill is looking as though they're about wait for you as you're running & then pulling off sharply. It'll also be interesting to see if a bendy bus driver wins this category.

Earlier in November, I missed blogging about the Railway Interiors Innovation and Excellence Awards. These worldwide gongs were handed out to "recognise and reward the rapidly increasing sophistication of railcar interior design, equipment, technology and furnishings."

I don't think the London Underground is classed as a railway as the Tube weren't in the shortlist for any of these awards. Although the Tube's not exactly sophisticated or that innovative when it comes to interiors. It tends to take the lead from other countries.


The Japanese were ahead when it came to priority seat markings on upholstery or moquette.

The new air conditioned Tube carriages with stretchy bits won't be in action until at least 2010 so they probably didn't qualify.


However, amongst all the overseas winners, there was one UK winner. Virgin Trains won Passenger Service Innovation of the Year for "overall passenger service excellence".

Had the judges travelled on a Virgin Train recently? I hadn't noticed anything particularly innovative about their "passenger service". Maybe apart from the fact they're calling us passengers now and not customers.

Ross Spicer, operations director Virgin Trains, collected the award and said, "Upping the standards of service is our goal, across all passenger classes. Investment in new trains is part of this, but there must also be investment in staff to improve the service. It's about the people, not just the trains."

Very noble and if you've any examples of Virgin Trains excellence (or otherwise) in passenger service, I've love to hear them.

Good luck to all in the UK Bus Awards today. But it's sad to report that UK's most famous bus driver, Reg Varney, died on Sunday 16th November. Varney played Stan Butler in the long running Seventies ITV sitcom "On The Buses".


Transport for London gave a nod back to the cheerful seventies image of London Transport in their recent campaign for the Freedom Pass for senior citizens (see the picture above & at the start of this blog post).

On the Buses painted a picture of London bus drivers as a group of work shy, lecherous, sexist, union driven, cheeky chaps. However, it was a big part of my TV viewing as a kid and part of me hopes there'll be a re-run of the series or films.

Tube Mirror, Tube Mirror on the wall

When Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty next fall out of the newly re-opened Hawley Arms, you might be pleased to hear that they can check out their pasty faces in a London Underground map mirror.


It's in the corridor downstairs on the way to the toilets of the Camden pub, the home of such stars as Ms Winehouse, Mr Doherty & Mr Borrell out of Razorlight.

Many thanks to Andy for braving the pub to take the picture & send it to me.

I almost bought this mirror on eBay once (SuckUK sold out of their stock a while back). But in the end thought that £60 was a bit much & also didn't want to have Old Street sticking out of my right eye all the time.

I settled on the much smaller & affordable pocket sized one, which I've actually never unboxed and will probably end up as someone's Xmas present.


Thinking about it, I bet some of the Hawley regulars can find a fair few other uses for this credit card sized mirror. So perhaps it should be in their back pockets too.

However, if you fancy getting a similar reflection to the wasted and famous in The Hawley Arms, you can buy the full sized mirror Tube map online at various places including iwantoneofthose.com.

Tube Electrician Strike - Any Affect?

There's nothing on the RMT's website to indicate that the electrician's strike on London Underground has been called off. The industrial action was due to begin at 19:59 last night, November 16 and end at 07:59 on Tuesday November 18th.

However, luckily for us, it's looking as though EDF Energy Powerlink's spokesman was right. He said: "In the event action is taken, arrangements are in place to ensure that the London Underground can continue to operate normally and that the safety of passengers and staff is maintained at all times."

Transport for London also said the strike would not affect services on London Underground and that it expected the network to run as normal. Although Bob Crow from the RMT union was far more optimistic in predicting doom and gloom and said the strike had "the potential to shut down large sections of the Tube network".

Your best bet is to check the Tube's website before travelling and listen out for any last minute station closures or disruption.

Tube Bite inspired film making on BBC Three

Last week I published a post about Bryony Matthewman who was bitten by a bloke on the Tube and it inspired her to create a zombie movie, written, auditioned & produced collaboratively through the internet. Somehow the BBC got in touch with me & I ended up sitting outside the ICA at the Tuttle Club on Friday interviewing her.

Photo by Andrew Mwai

Bryony gets tons of people asking her about the London Underground biting incident, and what happened to the man, whether she reported it, etc etc, but is fairly philosophical about it. I suppose it's something you'd want to wipe from your memory rather than dwell on. But luckily the experience made her wonder whether the guy could have been a zombie and if some of the weirdos we meet on the Tube are actually the living dead.

We spent a while chatting about the shenanigans & challenges involved in getting a bunch of people together through online forums, YouTube & blogs to actually write a zombie film. Despite the time & location differences & artistic strops, Bryony managed to stay relatively sane and pull it all together.


She was pretty pleased with the video blogs on YouTube where people were reporting & filming cases of Happy Chomping (like Happy Slapping but with err.. zombies) & the video diaries of people wondering if their family were turning into zombies.

I asked if any of the film was shot on the Tube, as a lot of it is set in London (there's also footage from New York, South America & Germany). "We actually filmed some outside Tube stations", Bryony said. "We felt it would be too much of a headache to approach the London Underground as they have lots of restrictions on filming on the Tube itself, and we wanted to try to get something out quickly".

Photo by Andrew
Mwai - from his World Zombie Day Set

"We do have some nice bits of footage from a Zombie Walk that took place in London in late October for World Zombie Day. Some people filmed their journey there and back on the London Underground & gave it a weird commonplace mood. As they were just filming on mobile phones this really added to making the film a lot more personal, which was one of the aims. We wanted to try to get people wondering what the hell was happening from all the YouTube video blogs"

The film World Wide Dead, still isn't completely finished yet (although had a mini premiere last week) but Bryony's determined to make it a success and I wish her well. TV producers, Hat Trick loved Bryony's idea and followed the project for the BBC. You can see the result "Bryony Makes a Zombie Movie" tonight on BBC Three at 11.45pm.

Tube Alert on Mobile phone for Misery Line

Occasionally a little error can inadvertently show a more accurate truth on the London Underground. Thanks to Jon W for a picture of his TfL travel alert for the Northern Line this morning.


He said "Some weird formatting in the text alert has made a confused smiley :S - which I guess is unintentionally appropriate for the severe delay!"

It's almost worth signing up to the mobile alerts to see what other weird emoticons the Tube can come up with.