A vehicle for Norman Wisdom
A scene from the 1966 film "Press for Time", courtesy of the Buses on Screen website (www.busesonscreen.net), as former Bournemouth Corporation 1939 Leyland TD5 open-topper (FEL214) meets a Devon General Leyland Atlantean on the streets of Teignmouth (called "Tinmouth" in the film). The presence on board of Norman Wisdom causes the bus to plunge into Teignmouth harbour and sink.
Strangely revered in Albania and also the Isle of Man, where he was long in tax-avoiding residence, Norman Wisdom once enjoyed great popularity during the 1950s and into the mid-1960s for his brand of slapstick comedy served with a hefty dollop of pathos. Charlie Chaplin acknowledged him as a worthy comic successor, and the two native Londoners shared the experience of harsh and impoverished childhoods.
In a series of money-spinners for the Rank Organisation, Norman Wisdom played the part of a simpleton who reduced the world around him to chaos, but was redeemed by a basic human decency.
Thus it is with "Press for Time", although watching it on YouTube, I did not have the patience to see exactly how the luckless FEL214 ended up in the water. I do remember the August 1966 issue of Buses Illustrated magazine showing the bus making a dramatic splash.
Such a fine vehicle was a sad loss to preservation, although as bus snuff movies go, FEL214’s fate was not as dramatic as that of RM1536, which tumbled over a North Kent cliff and exploded, bringing the Young Ones sitcom to a definite end.
A vehicle for Norman Wisdom
A scene from the 1966 film "Press for Time", courtesy of the Buses on Screen website (www.busesonscreen.net), as former Bournemouth Corporation 1939 Leyland TD5 open-topper (FEL214) meets a Devon General Leyland Atlantean on the streets of Teignmouth (called "Tinmouth" in the film). The presence on board of Norman Wisdom causes the bus to plunge into Teignmouth harbour and sink.
Strangely revered in Albania and also the Isle of Man, where he was long in tax-avoiding residence, Norman Wisdom once enjoyed great popularity during the 1950s and into the mid-1960s for his brand of slapstick comedy served with a hefty dollop of pathos. Charlie Chaplin acknowledged him as a worthy comic successor, and the two native Londoners shared the experience of harsh and impoverished childhoods.
In a series of money-spinners for the Rank Organisation, Norman Wisdom played the part of a simpleton who reduced the world around him to chaos, but was redeemed by a basic human decency.
Thus it is with "Press for Time", although watching it on YouTube, I did not have the patience to see exactly how the luckless FEL214 ended up in the water. I do remember the August 1966 issue of Buses Illustrated magazine showing the bus making a dramatic splash.
Such a fine vehicle was a sad loss to preservation, although as bus snuff movies go, FEL214’s fate was not as dramatic as that of RM1536, which tumbled over a North Kent cliff and exploded, bringing the Young Ones sitcom to a definite end.