PopMaster to Routemaster: Bus aficionado Ken Bruce given keys to some of Glasgow’s best vintage vehicles

Ken Bruce has been handed his ultimate dream ticket… he can hop on or off 120 vintage buses.

It’s 70 years since the top Scots DJ made his first trip as a three-year-old on a shoogly double decker to visit his granny and it became his favourite mode of transport.

Now Ken has been appointed the first ever patron of Glasgow Vintage Vehicle Trust – a charity which displays 130 lovingly restored buses, fire engines and commercial vehicles in a purpose-built garage in Bridgeton.

He returns home next weekend to host his inaugural event as patron and he’s hoping for a free hurl across the city.

Speaking exclusively to The Sunday Post, Ken, 73, said: “I can’t wait. I’ve always had a fascination for transport and this is right up my Glasgow street.

“Glasgow Vintage Vehicle Trust [GVVT] is pure nostalgia and a terrific organisation.

“It’s an absolute honour to be appointed patron.”

Bus memories

The radio legend, who grew up in Williamwood, between Giffnock and Clarkston, on the city’s south side, vividly remembers travelling by bus as a toddler in the 1950s.

He said: “We’d go to my granny’s in Riddrie. Later, I went to Hutchesons’ Grammar, so I used to get the bus down there every day – either the Glasgow Corporation bus or the Western SMT bus.”

Here's the timetable for our free vintage bus rides from @riversidemuseum to the City Centre and Glasgow Vintage Vehicle Trust Bridgeton Bus Garage Open Weekend. Our City Centre stops are great for the @GlasgowGoMA too! pic.twitter.com/9GpZwCvJgG

— Bridgeton Bus Garage Home of the GVVT (@GVVTGlasgow) October 8, 2024

But he became a true bus spotter aged 10 when he inherited an old Kodak brownie camera from his sister.

Ken, a dad of six, said: “It fell down the hierarchy of the family to me. I used to go out to the terminus and wait for a bus to come and try to take some decent pictures.

“To this day I distinctly remember one of my favourite photos – of a Glasgow Corporation Daimler in 1961. The bus came from Newlands garage and the registration was SGD151.

“It had just been repainted into the new livery of Glasgow Corporation and I took a very good shot of it with my camera. In those days you put your film into the chemist and waited two weeks.

“My picture was pin sharp, well focused and well framed. I remember being really pleased with myself. I kept it for years.”

© Glasgow Vintage Vehicle Trust

Ken has since lost the photo, but archivists at GVVT have uncovered a shot of sister bus SGD153 for him, which travelled the same route.

He added: “I’ve always been a bit of a nerd for timetables. Even to this day, I check the train timetable in the morning and see if it’s going to be on time and if not, why not, and what my options will be.

“I remember an Albion Lowlander bus came up from Newlands garage to Clarkston every Sunday morning. This would be in 1962 or 1963.

“On the front it said: ‘On hire to Glasgow Corporation Transport’ and I worked out that it was a new bus they were testing.

“I eventually got the Glasgow Corporation timetable, and I could tell where that bus went all day. I found that hugely satisfying for some reason that I can’t quite explain. I’ve always had that kind of interest in detail.”

He’ll appear at GVVT on both Saturday and Sunday, with his son Murray, 22, who is autistic and doesn’t speak, and who has clearly inherited his dad’s love of vehicles.

The pair previously featured in the BBC2 documentary, Inside Our Autistic Minds, when Murray revealed to host Chris Packham that he had no real form of communication until he was nine years old. He now communicates by typing words on a tablet.

© Supplied

Ken, who is married to Kerith, said: “Murray loves all sorts of transport. Any car journey, train journey or plane journey, and he absolutely loves buses.

“He will go anywhere in any vehicle. He will love the flight up to Glasgow as well and the car journey to the airport. Anything that involves transport. So, he will enjoy GVVT as much as I will.

“A love of transport is a very common interest for people who have autism. I don’t know why, but it certainly seems to be something which gives a lot of pleasure.

“Murray has never been to GVVT before. So, it will be a perfect weekend for us both.”

Popmaster to Routemaster

Ken hit the headlines in January last year when he announced he was quitting BBC Radio 2 after 31 years. He joined rival station Greatest Hits Radio.

At the time of his departure, his mid-morning show, with 8.5 million weekly listeners, was the most listened-to show on British radio.

He has since described the BBC as a “supertanker” – a slow organisation to turn around – which needs people with vision to make sure it goes the right way.

But he said: “I’m having a lovely time at Greatest Hits Radio – they are great people to work with and I’m playing lovely music, so what’s not to like?

“That time at Radio 2 is past now. They can carry on doing whatever they want to do, and I will carry on doing what I want to do.

“Greatest Hits Radio launched a 60s station and I will be making the odd, very occasional appearance on it. I’m really pleased to see it start because there’s a big market for that.”

He’ll be back in Glasgow for GVVT duties – but also filming Popmaster TV, his musical quiz which previously featured on his Radio 2 show and is now on Greatest Hits Radio. It has been commissioned for a third and fourth series on Channel 4.

Ken, who lives in Oxfordshire, said: “We’ll be recording another series within the next few weeks. We hope it will be on screen by Christmas.

“I’m glad I had the foresight to hold the rights to Popmaster. I’m not normally very clever when it comes to stuff like that. But for some reason I seemed to think it was worth holding onto. I mean we didn’t do anything with it for years.

“We eventually got it to a state where we were able to start a television series and that’s really down to my old friend who sadly just died, Phil Swern, the co-creator of Popmaster.

“He wrote all the questions. What a great man. And if it hadn’t been for him, we wouldn’t have got it on television. So, I owe him a great deal.”

© Supplied

He joked that he’s not planning to “take over the world” at GVVT, which was set up in 2002 and is based in Glasgow’s last remaining Corporation bus garage. Ken said: “I’ll do what I can to help in any way. Bridgeton Bus Garage is such a well-run organisation, doing exactly what it should to preserve vehicles.

“But it’s also getting them out on the road and running which is what they are supposed to do, and it’s doing really great work in the community in outreach.

“I’m not really someone who generally looks back – I’m usually looking forward. But I find as I get older I really want to be reunited with some of the old buses and trains and things that I knew when I was growing up.”

He previously held a PCV licence, so could drive buses, but let it lapse after his bus hiring business, which he’d set up with broadcasting pals, ended after Covid.

He’d owned and operated several iconic London Routemasters which were hired for weddings and events.

He said: “What I’m always impressed by at GVVT is not just the 1950s and 60s buses. It’s not just nostalgia for people of my age, it’s also much younger people who may remember their school bus from five or 10 years ago and that will be there as well.

“It’s the variety… and they do commercial vehicles as well. It’s a fabulous place. The fact that it’s a working garage is really good. Too many old buses are museum pieces and it’s a case of look but don’t touch.

“To see them working is just marvellous.”

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Glasgow Vintage Vehicle Trust Open Weekend, October 12-13, 10am-5pm. Visitors can enjoy free vintage bus services to and from the city centre, Kelvingrove Museum and the Riverside Museum, with Ken making an appearance as a guard on a vintage bus. He will also take charge of tannoy announcements and meet members and visitors. See www.gvvt.org for more information.