WE have all travelled on a bus at one time or another, but how many of us wonder what it is like to trundle around the country by day and night having to put up with mad drivers and even madder passengers on the highways and by-ways of Britain?

Beaumont has seen it and been through it (often in the North-East), from Methodist outings (they all asked for the pub), rugby club trips (nine drinkers downed 187 cans of lager and bitter) to coping with the massed hordes at a Bangladeshi wedding party and the antics of a whisky-fuelled Scottish ladies bowls team. All human life was experienced by Beaumont in his driver’s seat, but at least he never had a passenger die on his bus, unlike an unfortunate fellow driver.