Service medal

9:50am Thursday 10th January 2008

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The Rev David Hands, a Church of Nazarene Minister in Sunderland, and a full-time service bus driver, was awarded the MBE in the New Year honours for services to public transport, after customers commended him for his guided tours.

Owen Amos boarded his Number Three bus THE Number Three Stagecoach bus from Sunderland City Centre to Hylton Castle is like any other. Two elderly women sit, three rows from the front, and discuss Coronation Street into each other's hearing aids. A young girl sits alone by the front bay, one hand on a pushchair, staring through the window.

A teenage lad, earphones in, volume up, fiddles with his phone.

Like any other bus, then, until it passes Sunderland's vast Stadium of Light. "There is the Great Cathedral," booms a voice, Scottish and authoritative.

"We're in the drop zone, but it will get better.

I hope."

No one stirs. The lad presses his phone, the girl stays staring, the elderly women keep discussing Vera Duckworth's move to Blackpool. The Number Three's passengers, clearly, are used to this.

"Here, we remember Steve Thorburn, the banana metric martyr," says the voice, two minutes later.

"There's his shop on the right. A sad loss."

The voice - as the passengers know - belongs to the driver, the Rev David Hands, minister of the Church of the Nazarene, Millfield, Sunderland. He's still a minister, with two Sunday services and a midweek prayer meeting, but has been a full-time bus driver for the past eight years.

"Look at the vicarage of the left," he says, as we trundle round a corner. "That's where Lewis Carroll stayed, when his sister was married to the vicar.

Here is The Torrens pub on the right. The Torrens was a ship built on Wearside in 1875."

A trip home, and a tour guide, for £2.40. Bargain. Buses have always been cheaper than taxis: the Number Three is more entertaining, too. And educational. Last time I'd been lectured by a bus driver, I'd stuck chewing gum to the seat. Mr Hands, though, doesn't just do history.

Like any entertainer, he keeps his material fresh.

"Today would have been the birthday of Joseph Bonaparte," he says. "The older brother of Napoleon." I didn't know Napoleon had a brother.

"It's also the anniversary of when George Washington became the first president of the US," he adds.

The lecture tours started soon after Mr Hands became a bus driver. One day, he told passengers - apropos of nothing - that the river was low as the tide was out. Later that day, a boy boarded and said: "Tell us about the river again, driver." Eight years later, that river observer has an MBE.

In Hylton, by a floodlit football court, a middleaged woman boards. "Well done on the OBE," she says. "It's an MBE," Mr Hands replies. "But thanks very much." Later, eight rows back, the woman sneezes. "Bless you!" booms the driver.

The bus stops outside the Cauld Lad pub. "He's not the only one today," Mr Hands says and a group of people board. "Congratulations," says one woman. A man adds: "When we get on now, do we have to bow?"

News of Mr Hands' honour, like his bus, has run and run. Since it was announced, he's been on Sky News, BBC News and featured in national newspapers.

One article he wrote was titled "What I see on my bus tells me Britain is still a decent place."

After 30 minutes on the Number Three, I knew what he meant.

Most buses are quiet, solitary places. Heads are buried in papers, earphones block the outside world.

Here, Mr Hands' humanness sets the tone. Passengers chat and laugh with each other, in between learning the Harlem Globetrotters were founded on this day in 1927, and hearing "The Wheels on The Bus Go Round and Round". The bus has the conviviality of a busy pub lounge.

"I'd just like to wish everyone Happy New Year," Mr Hands bellows.

"Aye, and a Happy New Year to you, mate," a passenger replies, before turning to his unimpressed companion.

"Well, he's speaking to us, isn't he? You have to reply when someone speaks to you. It's only polite."

Another stop, another compliment. "Where's your medal?" a woman shrieks as she boards. "Well done love, from all of us."

Before his final stop, and the end of his shift, Mr Hands tells his passengers: "The MBE is a reflection of the people of Sunderland. If no one bothered to write, it wouldn't have happened - so thank you everybody."

After his shift, I speak to Mr Hands in the Stagecoach canteen. He gets me a cup of tea, asks what hand I use and puts it by my right accordingly. I ask how he prepares for his shifts/gigs.

"I do my research the night before," he says. "I rehearse it and keep notes in case I forget something.

And, of course, every time I have an anniversary my wife buys me a new book on the history of Sunderland so I have more to research from."

Does anyone ever tell him to be quiet?

"It has happened, but rarely," he says. "Very, very rarely. It's usually because someone wants to use their mobile phone. I say If you want to use the bus as an office, do you mind using the back seat'.

"There are plenty of bad headlines about people, but it's a minority. We have to remember the majority of people are good. The young people who get on the bus going to college, they are lovely young people. They need praise for committing their lives to education."

I ask - though I know the answer - whether he enjoys his 43 hours a week of bus driving. "I do enjoy it," Mr Hands says. "I do love it. The secret is to treat everybody alike. I don't treat anybody differently, no matter who they are, or where they're from."

Mr Hands, 63, will retire from bus driving when he turns 65, though not from the church. Born in Birmingham - his dad was also a minister of the Church of Nazarene - he moved to Scotland aged two and grew up in Motherwell, Govan, and Perth.

He pledged to the Band of Hope, a temperance organisation for working-class children, when he was seven and has never drank alcohol.

As well as minister and bus driver, Mr Hands is chairman of the Sunderland Counselling Service.

The MBE was for services to public transport. As I learnt on my bus tour, January 7 is the anniversary of Catherine of Aragon's death. The gong could have been, I realise, for services to the public.