Night Bus The Route Masters: Running London's Roads

TRAFFIC REPORT: The A13 westbound is moving slowly between...

Hold on tight.

London is full of them.

HORNS HONK

Are you going to allow them to jump on the back of your bus?

I'm afraid I won't be able to take more passengers.

Thanks to a million more people arriving in the last ten years,

Transport For London now has more than 30,000 workers

battling day and night...

HE WHISTLES Wake up!

..to stop the city grinding to a halt.

-Three people been shot up there.

-War. It's war.

All right, I'll get the police and ambulance straight down there.

In the first week I was here I thought, "What have I done?"

With unique access to the nerve centre

of the capital's transport system,

this is the inside story of the people who keep London moving.

You're not only a bus driver,

you become a psychotherapist and psychiatrist.

You get the people that like to talk to you.

Some of them even flirt with you.

I said, "At them moment, mate. Sit down quietly.

"We're not going to hell, we're going to Ilford."

It's the lifeblood of London. Well, the buses are red, aren't they?

There's my certificate. Look, I'm a bus driver.

SHE LAUGHS

Thank you very much. You are so nice.

Don't worry. No problem at all.

London's changed a lot but, yeah, I love it. It's London.

It's 9pm, the start of the night shift at Brixton bus garage.

PHONE RINGING

It's his first cover, isn't it?

Welcome to the night party!

I'm an ex-Formula One driver so three o'clock.

You'll see me as a red blur.

Dwayne Williams will be driving one of London's 1,000 night buses.

His shift runs till dawn.

He should take the hat off.

It's embarrassing the Reebok guys, the proper ones.

Is that better, Andrew? My hat is off now, Andrew.

Today I'm doing 159, N159, 244 duty.

Which starts at 9.30 until 5.37 in the morning. I can't wait.

Dwayne's route will take him five miles,

from Brixton into the heart of the West End.

It's from anything about ten to 12 o'clock,

that's when people start going out.

You get the funny people.

You get the people that like to talk to you.

You get the people that want to crack jokes.

-Aaaarrgh!

-That's not fair.

'People just going out for a quiet drink with their friends.'

They're excited. They talk to you. Some of them even flirt with you.

Jesus Christ love you.

Send your friend, send your friend.

Jesus said, come to me and you'll see I'll give you eternal life.

Jesus is coming.

You want the right ones to come in and the wrong ones do.

So the ones that should come over don't

and the ones that don't should.

-INTERVIEWER:

-Do you have a girlfriend at the moment?

No, no, no. Single, ready to mingle.

It's gone ten o'clock and the city's heaving.

Over the course of a single night,

buses will carry over 100,000 passengers.

But drivers aren't alone in dealing with the hordes.

Watching over them is London Transport's control hub,

known as CentreComm.

5-23-4-5, receiving CentreComm. Over.

OK and what caused the lady to fall over, please? Over.

Yeah, wait where you are. Do not continue driving.

Stop where you are I'll get an ambulance out to you. Over.

In the past, I would say, an hour, we've had

one, two, three, four, five, we've had six accidents.

We're averaging an accident at the moment every ten minutes.

We've got somebody that's been knocked off their motorcycle

by a car, blocking the road here.

This one, we've got a car that's knocked another motorcycle over.

This one we've got somebody who's got a rather nice Porsche 4x4

who's driven it into a lamp post.

Any incident on the roads is radioed from bus drivers

to CentreComm controllers.

It's their job to divert the buses and keep the system moving.

So did they hit you at all? Over.

Yeah, understood. Tell him police are on the way. Over.

The drivers are the eyes and ears. We're the brain, if you like.

They tell us what's going on

and then we act on the information we get.

Be guided by the police officers on scene. Any buses stuck there

for the moment, please advise your passengers they will be diverted.

Dwayne is arriving into town and doing just fine on his own.

Where you lot going?

To town.

Oh, yeah, yeah, going past there.

THEY SPEAK AT ONCE

You can jam with me.

'As a bus driver they see nice guy like me sitting behind the wheel.'

Instead of me looking for them, they get on my bus, so they look for me.

They give you the eye, you give them back the eye. Then they smile

and you go, "Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me," and then they come back

and they go, "Oh, was that fine?"

I go, "Yeah, it was fine but you're finer."

You see? And then it just starts from there.

I ain't got no more change on the bus.

-Hiya.

-Hello, we've just been to a lovely restaurant.

-INTERVIEWER:

-That was a good chance.

I know but too loud.

Thank you.

-That was a bit short but he did a great job.

-Bye.

THEY SQUEAL

It's starting to get lively now.

Driving the night bus is a job that's changed

beyond recognition over the past ten years,

as the bus service has grown to cope with an exploding population.

PK's parents were part of

the first wave of immigrants from the Caribbean.

Now their son is transporting

migrants from all corners of the world across London.

Yeah, sure, mate.

-You got a pass mate?

-Sorry?

-Got a ticket? Got a ticket?

He can see first-hand how this city is changing.

Well, when I was growing up,

I mean, I used to go to Brixton Market all the time with my mum,

back end of the '50s, Brixton Market is where you'd go to

get all your sort of fruits and vegetables that she grew up with

back in Guyana, South America.

There's lots of people now that wouldn't have come to Brixton

when I was younger who are now living in Brixton.

A lot of people I knew that lived there have moved out,

obviously cos the house prices were good. Some of them

made out like bandits. It worked out well for them,

I don't have a problem with it. Most people I know don't have a problem

with it, apart from the odd person who sort of looks at people who've

sort of grown up around here as if what are we doing here now,

you know?

But it makes for an interesting backdrop, I guess...

..to life in South London.

There used to be just eight night-time bus routes that followed

the underground train lines, from the centre of town.

-Where are you going?

-Home.

About time too.

But London has grown

more quickly than the trains or Tube could ever cope with.

Since 2000, the number of night passengers has tripled.

Now, over 100 routes reach ever further into the expanding suburbs.

Ilford, 12 miles east of the city centre once had

a trickle of late services. Now there's a deluge.

Ten years ago there weren't many night buses.

One used to come every one hour.

We used to have to catch a cab home from a nightclub.

Now, like, one of the routes we have they run

every six minutes at night-time on a Friday night.

That's the N25.

And every bus, even though every six minutes, they are packed.

As-salamu alaikum.

Good evening, gentlemen.

Tonight Sajjad Sharif is driving the N25

between Ilford and Oxford Street.

This route connects very different parts of town.

Yes, we've passed Aldgate and Mile End Road.

That's predominantly a Bangladeshi community.

From here, it will be tourists, partygoers,

and your City folk, suits.

Yeah, we're here in the heart of the City now, next to NatWest Tower

and all these big buildings going up.

There's a lot of money here but no soul.

They're more friendlier back there than they are over here.

Here seems to be everybody's in a rush.

Get on, get off. Doof, boof.

Excuse me. Hello!

Hello. Excuse me, sir.

You've got no money on your card.

£2.30, please.

See everybody's running around like headless chickens.

You open the doors, they're like...um...Olympics, it is.

They all think they're Usain Bolt. They've got to get there first.

I was going to open up a supermarket in Romford, with my dad.

He was a bit quiet, and I said, "What's wrong?"

He goes, "If you go to the supermarket,

"your wife will be there busy, you won't have time for us.

"We're old age pensioners.

"What are we going to look at, these four walls?

"We're going to miss the grandchildren."

What do you want me to do? "Do bus driving, that's OK."

Which worked out better, cos everything I did,

with his permission or with his blessing, I've been successful in,

and anything I've done on me own, solo, has gone the other way around.

So this way it gives me prayer time, playtime, work time.

As drinkers start going home, CentreComm moves up a gear.

Route 60, you called a code red. Go ahead. Over.

High Street, Ponders End, we've got a bus driven into a house.

We start to get more calls, disturbances,

disagreements with drivers.

Anything from fare dispute up to alcohol-related disturbances.

I'll get the police and ambulance straight down there.

Call us back when you're clear. CentreComm out.

'I prefer nights, rather than days.

'It just suits me. I like doing them.'

At night, I find the work a bit more interesting. It's more

of a case of you get disturbances on the bus,

you get fights, fare disputes.

It's a bit more variety, a bit more... A bit more action.

Once again, a 13-year-old white female,

blonde hair in a ponytail, five foot nine tall,

gone missing in the Croydon Road. If you know her whereabouts

contact CentreComm and we'll get the police straight to you, thank you.

That was a missing person request from the police. A 13-year-old girl

has gone missing and left a note at home. Run away from home.

So they've asked us to circulate it to all buses.

Ladies and gentlemen, Can I see your tickets and passes, please?

The more people who travel at night, the more who decide not to pay.

Good evening. Please have your tickets or Oyster Cards

ready for inspection. Thank you very much. Good evening.

Fare evasion on buses costs Londoners £40 million a year.

Your pass hasn't been touched on the bus.

You haven't validated your journey.

Can you write down your name, address and date of birth for me, please?

You know your name?

It's up to inspectors to get details of all passengers

without valid tickets.

It's not always easy.

What's your name there?

-Asomwa.

-How do you spell that?

-Asomwa.

-Yeah, how do you spell that?

A...S.

Yeah.

A-S?

A-S-O-mwa.

No, I didn't catch that last bit there.

No, what's the rest of your name?

-A-S and then what's the rest of the letters?

-Asomwa.

Yeah, that's what I'm asking you how to spell that. Is that A-S?

A...

-A.

-Yeah.

-S.

-Yeah.

-O.

-O, yeah.

Are you getting me?

Yeah, I've got A-S-O. I'm waiting for the rest of them now.

Fella. Fella.

Fella? Can you look at me, please?

Sir, while I'm talking to you.

After 15 minutes, the man finally gets to the end of his name.

Right, this is your penalty fare here, sir.

I just need you to look so you know what you've got.

-This is the penalty fare here.

-How much is my penalty?

It's £40 if you pay it within 21 days, OK?

Total there was four penalty fares on that bus

and my colleague done three in the time it took me to do one.

In East London, Tommy McKerr is starting his shift on route N25.

It also has a reputation for fare dodgers.

Generally the public are good people.

'90% of them will pay their fare, they'll tap in,

'and it's just the small minority that spoils it for everyone else.'

Some will try anything to get a free ride.

Well, the police station's round there, mate,

if you need to go to the police station.

-Actually, first I want to go back home.

-Huh?

First I want to go back.

No, you need to go to the police station, mate.

-I want to go home.

-You need to go to the police station.

He says that he's just been mugged down the road.

He's been beaten up and they've taken all his money and everything

but there's not a mark on him, so I said to him,

"If you've been beaten up

"the police station's just round the corner. Go to the police station."

He goes, "No, I need to go home first."

It's just one of the many stories that we hear all the time.

"I've just been mugged."

But they'll go and buy a pair of trainers that cost a £100 or

whatever and don't want to spend £2.40 to get home.

I know if I go out I'm always going to make sure I've got

a means of getting home.

In Camden Town, North London bars are still serving.

Late night drinking, now legal for ten years,

has changed the habits of a generation.

But the Tube still closes before 1am.

Shall I shut them gates? You going to shut the gates?

We'll leave it at that.

214 bus.

And why? Why? Why?

Cos you've missed it. The last southbound's gone.

You were busy in the pub and the train was pulling off the platform.

Buses for you.

Going to King's Cross, King's Cross.

King's Cross is south. There's no more southbound.

Come on.

A lot of them are really quite upset

when they've missed the last southbound.

They get a bit distraught. Some of them do cry, not many.

Most of them just get angry,

But you just sort of give them a bus route and they're quite

happy with that. Well, fairly happy. It depends how drunk they are.

Where you going to?

Central London.

You've missed it.

Where do you want to go?

214 bus opposite Sainsbury's, straight down there.

Oh, my God, London is some kind of village. It's Friday night,

Finished. Where do you want to go?

-Straight down there opposite Sainsbury's.

-Fucking bastard.

-253.

-Sorry, not you, of course.

-Have a nice night.

You're bad luck now. Put it down. Put that shit down.

We go from Camden to Trafalgar Square to get the N26 to

Chingford, whereas that's two buses whereas it's more like Underground

takes us 20 minutes, this takes us an hour and a half to get home.

# 500, 25,000, 600 minutes. #

Will you stop talking and hugging everyone, please?

We need to get home here.

It's a lot more fun than a taxi.

You meet a lot of interesting people on a night bus.

It's a weird sense, because the night...

It seems like the night bus enjoys me being on it.

I don't know. It's funny. I don't know how to describe it.

It's now the pressure on CentreComm staff really starts to build up.

Saturday night, Sunday mornings,

this sort of time of the day

you get lots of accidents. Lots of drunk people coming

out of nightclubs and pubs. So it can be a pretty busy time.

Got a male standing in front of the bus.

He's standing in front of the bus refusing to move.

He's just standing there and giving the driver grief.

Delaying the service, yeah.

It's not just buses. They step in front of anything.

They wander around in the road.

They don't know where they are.

It's the state of Britain today, I'm afraid.

Young gentleman standing in the middle of the road

by Tottenham Court Road playing chicken with the traffic. Over.

Just called in a code blue to let CentreComm know

so they can maybe get the police down

to take him out of the road.

In North London, a woman has been hit by a taxi on a major bus route.

Looks like Seven Sisters Road at the moment is now closed town-bound.

The ambulance has just this minute arrived,

and you've got this person laying in the road at the moment.

The thing all the time, when an incident happens, we've got

to think on our feet and try and get rid of the vehicle

away from there as soon as possible, because within, you know

a very short length of time that part of Seven Sisters Road

will be a sea of buses, so now that they're already discussing

and putting out the diversions to clear the vehicles back.

I've just searched him,

he's on Holland Park Avenue going back, going eastbound again.

Sometimes the bus drivers do become emotionally involved.

Quite understandable - they're the ones on the scene at the incident.

So we have to remain calm, try to keep them calm

so that we can get all the facts, details,

pass on the relevant information to the ambulance, fire brigade,

police so that it can be dealt with quickly, efficiently

and to save lives.

We've got a report there's a male passenger onboard,

in his 30's, not breathing. Unconscious but not breathing.

Oh, hold on, hold on. Lazarus. He's gone. Lazarus has risen.

He's gone.

All right, guv? Yeah. No, no. Miracles have happened.

He has raised from the dead and he's gone.

The later it gets, the more isolated drivers can feel.

In Ilford, a group of young men is laying siege to Tommy's bus.

KNOCKING ON WINDOW

HE SHOUTS

Who's banging on the fucking...?

Look at the camera, yeah, look at the camera!

Boom, boom, boom, boom.

KNOCKING

YOUTH HUMS TUNE

THEY SHOUT

Bus shots!

Pow, pow, pow.

921-N25 code red go ahead.

KNOCKING ON GLASS

Yeah. What's the problem there, sir? Over.

Sorry, go again for me. What's going on there?

Police on the way. How many males are there? Over.

All right. Police on the way. Give me a call when you're clear, please?

Diver, what is going on? I need to pay.

Tommy is on his own.

But drivers are advised never to leave their cab.

You all stormed upstairs. You've all got to pay.

No, I touched already.

Yeah, well, I know. You're all right.

I touched already. Everyone touched it, man, so what's your problem?

-WOMAN:

-Come on. Chuck him.

-MAN:

-Wasting time.

-Chuck him.

The driver's doing his job now. He's asked them to leave and because

of his actions other passengers are starting to turn on him.

You lot are just standing there, right,

talking about these crazy black people.

All black people are not that loud.

No, basically everybody... Some of them are just coming from work,

some of them want to go home to just relax and then back again,

to work or whatever they're doing. Some people are just messing

around on the bus, so this need to be sorted out as soon as possible.

They want to get home. He's doing his job,

and basically other passengers don't see it like that. They just

see it as it's his fault that they're not going nowhere,

not the passengers that haven't paid for their journey.

All right, any weapons seen or used? Over.

In the town centre, the ticket inspectors are still

on the hunt for fare dodgers.

It's three o'clock in the morning, everyone's coming out now.

It's getting busy.

127. Hello, driver.

Hello, have you got your tickets or passes ready, please?

But something much more serious has just happened on their bus.

Thank you.

Oh, hold up then. He's been bashed.

Yeah, but what's going on up there?

I don't know. The guy's bleeding, though. So...

Just had a passenger come from the top deck.

Looks like they're bleeding.

A police officer's just come off the bus with him.

Ladies and gents, I do apologise at the moment,

this bus is going to have to be held here. There's something

happened on the top deck. Going to transfer you on to another bus.

Georgie Veres was on his way home

when he was attacked from behind by a stranger.

He just broke my... Threw the fucking beer glass in my head.

That guy, he's over there.

I have no idea what happened.

I'm fucking scared

because I'm living here, like, two years and nothing happened like this.

Back in Ilford, Tommy's bus is on the move again.

He's going.

Yeah, 9-21 calling back. See you left the scene so presumably

they're off your bus now? Over.

OK, thanks very much indeed for calling back. Over.

CentreComm out.

With the problem passengers off the bus, police can be stood down.

Hello. Cancellation 1447.

But the incident has put Tommy behind schedule

and his route controller wants to know why.

Cos it's been busy, mate,

and I've just done another code red, but I'm clear now.

A load of black guys stormed the bus without paying,

but they've all got off now.

-MAN:

-Jeez. Black guys? It's fucking colour, that's all.

So why is he saying, "A load of black guys?" Huh?

And the guy goes, "Black guys."

It's true cos the majority of them are black.

So you can't say, "Oh, he was making it up."

It was a majority of black people, and by doing this,

giving black people a bad name. All black people are not like that.

Nothing to do with blacks. My wife's black.

Serious. And I get called racist and everything but little do they know.

So I've got two beautiful kids.

I'm half Asian myself. People don't

know that when they see me, they just think straightaway, "Racist."

I wanted to take a cab. My friend goes,

"Oh, just jump on a night bus. Simple, straight, there's no

"traffic in the road. You just jump on it. By the time you realise,

"you're there." You jump on a night bus and you get a drama.

I don't often get it and I regret getting it now.

'In the two years I've been here,

'I've been threatened with being stabbed, being shot,

'being threatened to be beaten up.

'I've been spat at on numerous occasions, you know.

'Some driver had a stiletto shoe thrown

'at his head and another driver had a brick thrown at his window.

'It's just the perils of the job I'm afraid. Part and parcel.'

WOMAN SHOUTS

In Central London, a suspect has been arrested for the bottle attack.

MAN SHOUTS

Cheers, mate. I thought I weren't going to take the chance in case...

The top deck of this bus is now a crime scene.

The victim has got a head injury.

At the moment it doesn't appear

to be serious, thankfully. The offender's been arrested.

He's going to go to Charring Cross to be dealt with there.

Bottle has been handled by the offender.

There's been fingerprints round the bottle. DNA from the neck.

It will be good evidence. There will be good CCTV from the bus so we can

just hope that it hopefully will come together and make sure the

victim gets a good service and results in a conviction in court.

It's gone 3am, and the nightlife is spilling out on to the streets.

In Croydon one man is causing a major incident.

Got a gentleman that's threatening

to jump off a building there in St George's Walk, Croydon.

He's been up there for about an hour and a half.

I don't know what the idea of the mask was.

He's got a mask and no shirt on.

CentreComm controllers have diverted buses from the street below.

Where he was originally, it was across Park Street, which is

the road that goes across.

If he'd jumped, he could have jumped in front of a bus or something so...

The thing is if you've got somebody that is possibly a suicide risk,

and you've got, you know, buses going past there,

the unfortunate thing is human nature,

sadly is that people will be going past on the buses and in cars

and stuff like that, shouting out the window, "Go on, jump, you fool."

I've been on nights the past couple of weeks

and I think we've had three in the last couple of weeks.

So we are getting more and more of them.

Police have arrived at the scene,

but all CentreComm staff can do is watch and wait.

At weekends, there are never fewer than 850 buses on the roads.

The best time to get on this bus is between one and five.

I was sitting next to a guy after clubbing one time at 5am, yeah?

He sat down next to me, passed out and then soiled himself.

They thought it was hilarious. They thought it was a big joke.

I was trapped next to a guy, with this foul stench.

That's the kind of people that the 25 bus attracts.

If I go out clubbing and people often ask me, "What if you meet

"the guy of your dreams and you're dressed as a girl? Like,

"what's going to happen?"

And I say, "The guy of my dreams will think it's cool

"that I like dressing as a girl

"and he'll be like, 'oh, my god, you're so talented.' "

I go to Cambridge and I do music at Cambridge.

And Cambridge is quite different to London in many ways

and Deena doesn't really come out in Cambridge that often.

She's barely ever in London. You're lucky she's here.

-I am privileged.

-It's a privilege!

I think it's wicked. I'm friends with a drag queen.

I love actually... I love the streets of London and that's why

I prefer travelling by bus because the view is so fantastic because

you actually get to see the entire city and it's actually so nice.

The bright lights, you know,

and it looks good against the dark backdrop, doesn't it?

And it gives you a chance to actually take a good look at London.

You know, which you don't really get a chance to see in the day

because it is always so busy, and if

you can see some of the architecture as well, it's quite fascinating.

Sometimes makes you wonder, like, you know, the people that built

some of these things, you know.

Some of them must have been quite brilliant really, so...

RADIO CHATTER

It's two hours now.

Yeah, he's still there.

We're all getting lax at the moment.

We're having little breaks when we can cos we should have a meal break

but during the night we don't actually leave our desks.

So we sit here for 12 hours. We'll have something to eat

at the desk, a cup of tea at the desk and just carry on.

In Brixton, the clean-up has already begun.

Animals are better because

when they shit, they hide their shit.

But human beings can't.

Blood, takeaways sometimes, vomiting.

Vomit is the worst.

Throughout the night, essential work is done to keep the buses moving.

Yeah, this one.

One special team has to stop trees growing across the roads.

SAWING

When you hit a branch, the tree responds to that

by putting some timber on around the damage

so it thickens and flattens.

So then when the bus hits it again, it then thickens and flattens again

and then eventually it just causes

a hell of a lot of damage to the front of the buses.

In South Kensington,

Winston Hibbert is changing the ads in the bus stops.

Let's take this pretty girl out, man. Isn't she nice?

Oh, she's been here a couple of weeks now.

Sorry to see you go, baby.

I've never once had an argument with a bus driver.

We get in each other's way all the time though.

They shout at me, "Get out the way!"

I say, "Look, brother, I'm doing my job, you're doing yours.

"Can't be helped."

And I give thanks that I've got a job like this.

I'd rather do this than sit down at home

and wondering, "What the hell am I going to do?"

Winston has been doing this job for eight years and is now 65.

Most people, man, as soon as they retire, they give up, ain't it?

They retire and you think you give up.

I'll never give up, bruv. I ain't got no money,

I'm struggling but I love life.

You like her? You can't have her.

Let's roll.

This part of town, you've got to have money to live around here

and be around this side of town.

Look at the size of these houses, man.

I mean, renting a place around here,

it must cost you an arm and a leg, man.

Couldn't afford to live around here.

Inner London is now the wealthiest area in Europe.

The night buses have helped bridge the gap

between the affordable suburbs and the rich centre.

But for some, they've become a home.

Well, the 25 is famous for a lot of sleepers.

We get a lot of sleepers on this route. They just maybe can't pay

for the rent so they decide to stay and sleep on the bus at night.

This last winter here, we've had loads of people

sleeping on the bus - every colour, every race, every creed.

We have them as young as 12, 13, on this route, sleeping.

On a cold night, Donovan Phillips will pick up

at least half a dozen homeless passengers.

Sometimes I feel sad because you're thinking

when you've finished you go home to a nice warm bed

and these people on the streets all night. I mean, especially the

young women - they've vulnerable. You just feel sorry for these people

because it can be a lonely, lonely life,

going up and down on the buses and you haven't got nowhere to stay.

London is one of the most expensive cities in the world.

Some of them work during the day, you know they have a job but they

just can't afford to pay the rent, so they come here and they sleep.

Well, you're going to a nice comfy bed.

Me? This is my front room, mate. This is my bedroom.

This is where you'll stay?

-This is where I stay.

-The whole night?

All night, brother.

You see the whole of London, don't you?

Well, yeah.

That's quite nice, isn't it?

Jeff Malone has been on and off the streets,

and buses, for the past five years.

One day, I'll be a millionaire.

You have to be optimistic. You don't know, you know.

If I put a pound on the lottery, you never know, I might be one.

Beautiful, that one there. That is a McLaren.

One day, I will get one of those. I'll go in there,

dressed up like a tramp, yeah, and they will try and run me

out the place, yeah. You know what I'll do? Open up a bag

and then dust the cash right on the table, yeah.

You know what I'll tell the arsehole? Never judge

a book by its cover cos you never know who you may discover.

Despite efforts to curb homelessness,

last year, the number of rough sleepers in London went up by 40%.

What you do basically, street tobacco, yeah?

You get a clean one. Every homeless guy does this,

cos sometimes you can't even afford

bloody tobacco that we can smoke, yeah?

Cos sometimes you ask people and they tell us to F-U-C-K off.

You've got to avoid certain routes during the weekends

cos you've got the partygoers, and you can't get no sleep.

Yeah. So you have to choose the more quieter routes.

And that, to me, that's where I can get a little bit of warmth

and shelter and that and feel human.

But when you're sleeping on a street, you're not...

You're not human, man. You're like a dog. You know what I mean?

My mum never raised me as no dog or no pet.

The N9 is the longest run, night bus service all the way cos it

goes to the outskirts of London, right? It's about 82 minutes,

which is about an hour and something, that's equivalent

to a flight from Heathrow...

From Heathrow to Spain.

Let's go boys. Let's go to a real luxury tour, come on.

Here we are.

Thanks. All right?

Oh, man.

Oh.

This is what you... This is my bedroom, this is.

MUSIC: "Concrete Jungle" by Bob Marley

# No sun will shine in my day today

# No sun will shine... #

I remember when I was first homeless.

Boy, oh, boy, oh, boy.

It was a frightening experience.

It all went just like that.

Property crash, you know? It just went.

Lost everything. Learn how to survive out here cos it's,

like Bob Marley says, it's like a concrete jungle.

It is a concrete jungle.

# Where is the love to be found?

# Won't someone tell me?

-# Cos life...

-Sweet life

-..must be somewhere

# To be found. #

And we've still got the man on the roof in Croydon.

The man threatening to jump has started communicating with police.

He was going like that.

He was giving the, um... There he goes, look.

Seriously, I don't think he's likely to be a jump.

Yeah, I think he's just... He's got a bee in his bonnet

about something and he's having a go at the police about it as well.

Normal jumpers, they'll, they'll sit and they'll talk and

they're on the edge and they're on the verge of jumping off.

With controllers deciding he is now less of a risk,

buses are taken off diversion.

Maybe it's just an attention thing, you know. I mean, he's certainly

getting plenty of that. He's got the fire brigade standing by,

he's got possibly an ambulance standing by, the police standing by.

Who can see into the minds of some people, you know?

N98. Called code red. Go ahead.

In Brixton, PK and Dwayne are entitled to an hour's break.

-We're at Arriva Brixton's social...

-Common room.

-Common room.

Like school.

And my man Dwayne here's giving me a few pointers.

I think it's for drivers to let off a bit of steam.

Like, when they come in from their break and, you know, even

before they go home, because the one thing you don't want to do in this

job is take the stress of the day home with you. When you're dealing

with miserable people, they've got bad things going on in their

lives, we seem to be the people they take it out on, the bus driver.

You know, anything that's going wrong in their lives, it comes to us.

If people have spent their money, you know,

they've got hangovers, some of them didn't get none on the weekend,

you know. So all things like that are factors.

I try and keep upbeat and think of the money at the end of the week.

Hello. How are you?

'What I like about working nights - it's quiet,

'it's more flexible for me.

'I like to do things in the day.'

I used to be a swimming instructor before and a lifeguard.

I done that since I left school.

Then I was bored of that and then I was on the bus going home.

I saw it on another bus on the other side of the road -

£500 a week. So I thought, "Why not?"

Jeff has arrived at the end of the line.

Here we are.

-BUS:

-This bus terminates here. Please take all your belongings with you.

Well, here I am. My luxury hotel.

Terminal five.

The longest route in London.

Steel and glass, brother.

You know what I mean? It's clean, man.

You can even shower in here in Heathrow as well.

There's a certain terminal that you can go and shower if you want.

I'm going to use the men's room and come back out

and then jump back on the N9 again.

That's what I do.

Well, I've got to look like I'm a tourist, ain't it?

# Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner

# That I love London town

# I get a funny feeling inside of me... #

HE CHUCKLES

Yeah, you get people everywhere.

If I have the cap off and drive like this, in certain areas,

you'll get looks, but when you speak to them,

cos I'm born and bred here and you speak slightly cockney,

they think, "He's one of us."

Get a few people coming on, preaching the Bible and other things.

A bloke come on the bus and he started screaming and shouting,

"We're going to hell! This is happening, that's happening.

"The world's falling apart."

And he started scaring the other passengers.

So I told him, "Sit down quietly.

"We're not going to hell, we're going to Ilford."

Being a Muslim, we've got to do our five prayers a day and I try to cram

the prayers in in our break times.

And I do that. It's like a gym workout.

If you don't do it, you feel ill. It's compulsory, not optional.

Take your socks off first.

This place is usually flooded.

Got to be careful how we do it all.

This is the hot water and it's freezing cold.

You've got to do your feet and all.

So now I'm in the prayer mode.

Otherwise you can't pray unless you've done an ablution.

You've cleaned yourself up

and you're lucky you're not touching urine or anything.

Lean up against there and put my socks on.

Put me towel through.

Lovely jubbly. Feel the cold now.

This is another thing on the bus.

Which way do we pray? How do we know it's Mecca?

So I turn around, wherever I am,

you look out for a satellite dish. Couple of dishes over there.

And whichever way they're facing, that's usually towards Mecca.

Usually, you plan this out.

All day long, we know where we're going from one end to the other end

and where the bus stops are, where the stations are, I look it all up.

We looked it up so we're planning it.

HE WHISPERS PRAYER

Jeff has more earthly concerns.

He's waiting for the N9 back into town from Heathrow.

Man, have you got a spare roll-up on you?

A cigarette on you, family? Cheers, fam.

He's not flying anywhere today

but he's never forgotten what the city looks like from the air.

The first thing I saw when I was flying over London

was all the sea of red buses.

That was the thing. It's the lifeblood of London.

Well, the buses are red, aren't they?

Since he lost his business and his home,

the buses have been a lifeline to Jeff.

Like I say, you're one pay cheque away from being on the street, fam.

One pay cheque away. Anybody. You, me, anyone.

If you don't bring in that M-O-N-E-Y on the table, this is what happens.

This is us now.

24/7, seven days a week.

Just another page in your life, isn't it?

With morning rush hour fast approaching,

the number of buses on the roads will soon quadruple.

RADIO CHATTER

Yeah, understood, man. I'll have a part of the yard up and ready

for you shortly and I'll give you a call when it's ready, yeah?

In the East End, yard controller H is getting them ready to go.

We're just putting all the bus numbers down

in what lanes they're in

so we get it ready for the run-out in the morning.

This is why we have to have the gap in between.

And they take the mickey out of me sometimes, because they say

they've got to make the gap bigger.

Cheeky little buggers.

266.

44074.

In front of that, 281.

This is what I'm talking about.

I've been in the bus industry 29 years.

Started out as a driver. Yeah, my dad used to say to me, he said,

"Get into the bus industry.

"You'll get a good pension." You know?

And it made him proud, really, and my dad, for the first time, was crying

with joy and that's the first time I've ever seen him cry for anything.

He was so taken in that I was working for London Transport.

To get a job like this was a very, very big thing.

Yeah, I'm from a Caribbean background and when you go back on holiday,

to say that you work for London Transport

it was a big thing. It still is today, really.

See you later.

My dad retired from the Post Office and my mum was working

as a dinner lady in a school and he'd realised that she'd finished

work early so he decided that he's going to get home to see her.

So what does he do? He runs for the bus. When he gets to the bus

it was the old Routemasters

and he got on the back and downstairs was full

and he ran upstairs and then he had a heart attack.

And my dad died on a bus.

That knocked me sideways, big time.

Ah.

Ah, it killed me.

72.

72 and he died on a bus.

It's the end of the night shift at CentreComm.

Yeah, I'm signing off for another night soon.

No, I've got to go home and go to sleep.

You've got all day to survive, haven't you?

Someone else had decided he's ready to go home.

He's got a jacket on to warm up.

Letting him have a cigarette before they take him into the cells I think.

The man on the roof has come back down to earth safely.

He's on handcuffs. Yeah.

All smiles. I think they might know him.

Who brought these?

Breakfast?

-They're nice.

-No, I'm going home. Straight home to bed.

We'll, see you all tonight who's here. See you later, people.

See you later on.

The night drivers are coming to the end of their shift.

But first, they have to deal with the final wave of passengers.

These are like your early morning workers, cleaners that have

just finished jobs or just going to jobs to clean them and all that.

Cos it's a big city, a lot of the places are 24 hours and that,

there's a lot of people that are still floating around working

while everyone's sleeping, like me.

London doesn't sleep. 24-hour city.

Tubes close, train drivers go home.

Bus drivers don't. They're on 24 hours, seven days a week.

In the East End, H is signing in a fresh army of daytime drivers.

So it's going to be 149, Mick.

And that's going to be in lane number four.

I ain't sending you to lane 14 today,

I'm going to send you to lane ten.

He has the power to decide who gets which bus.

-This is bus number 225. Is that a good bus?

-Yes.

It's a good bus. Why?

It's a good bus. It drives nice and smoothly.

-And the seat's good.

-Yeah, see?

-The seat is very important.

It's got to be comfortable.

Please use the walkway, pull your bus forward, drive carefully and...?

-Have a nice day.

-Have a nice day. Thank you.

Go. You watching back, yeah?

If you look in the bus force there you'll see that's all

the night buses that have come in. So they're all waiting to be

fuelled, swept, parked up and back out again.

The run-out is four and a half hours to get rid of 206 buses

and that's the total buses we do every morning.

Yes, go on.

Tommy has made it back home in one piece.

It's when you get home, you feel tired. At the moment I'm OK,

but as soon as you get home it sort of hits you.

Watch a bit of telly, read the paper then I go to bed.

And then get up and start all over again.

In Brixton, PK is clocking off.

Took £21.60 tonight.

-Wow.

-Yeah.

Most people are travelling with Oysters

so it is better that we don't have to carry cash.

Hopefully it will get to the point where we don't have to take

cash at all and then that way it's just easier all round.

Right, good night, everybody.

London's changed a lot. I think it's showing now,

with the night buses being as busy as they are

and as packed as they can be,

how much of a melting pot it is. But, yeah, I love it.

It's London. I think even if I had the opportunity to move away,

I think I'd miss the hustle and bustle and the busyness of it and

I think that's what gets you - once you're in it, you're in it.

And now I'm going home cos I've got a hot date with a young

Lara Croft on the Xbox 360.

Cos she got herself in some trouble again,

so I've got to go and help her out of that situation.

And I've got to do that, I've got about an hour of doing that

before the kids wake up and I've got to cook them breakfast, so I'm

going to do that and then I'll most probably go off to sleep myself.

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