On the Buses

Reg Varney - Stan Butler
Doris Hare - Stan's Mum
Michael Robbins - Arthur
Anna Karen - Olive
Stephen Lewis - Blakey
Bob Grant - Jack
Andrea Lawrence - Betty
Pat Ashton - Sally
Brian Oulton - Manager
Pamela Cundell - Ruby
Pat Coombs - Vera
Wendy Richard - Housewife
Peter Madden - Mr Brooks
David Lodge - Busman

The most popular box-office film of 1971 was this feature-length spin-off from the popular 1970s ITV television series about the antics of drivers and clippies at a Home Counties bus depot. All of the original cast members return; Reg Varney and Bob Grant reprise their roles as the oversexed middle-aged driver and his conductor, Stephen Lewis as the grimly laughing Inspector; and Anna Karen and Michael Robbins as bespectacled Olive and her under-sexed husband. The politically-incorrect broad humour is dated by today’s standards and thoroughly sexist but ensured mass appeal in the early ‘70s. Due to the bawdy big screen success of On the Buses two sequels followed; Mutiny on the Buses (1972) and Holiday on the Buses (1973).

Stan Butler (Reg Varney) and the rest of the lads at the bus depot are horrified when the Town and District Bus Company, and the constant thorn in their side, Inspector Blakey (Stephen Lewis), decide to hire women drivers due to staff shortages. Stan relies on his overtime to afford his mother’s many white goods bought on the never-never, and into the bargain his sister Olive is pregnant and unable to work in the bus canteen. Together with his lecherous conductor Jack (Bob Grant), the pair wastes no time in trying to overturn the new company policy and get the new recruits dismissed with a series of mischievous practical jokes.