Fuzz Townshend needn’t have given me his address.
As we enter the small Leicestershire village where he lives, X – or, in this case, a 54-year-old double-decker service bus – marks the spot.
For not only does the 58-year-old presenter of TV’s Car SOS and Shed & Buried own an eclectic mix of classic cars, as you’d expect, but also an ex-West Midlands 1969 Daimler Fleetline.
And at 14ft 9in high, 33ft long and 8ft 2in wide, it’s a bit of a landmark.
Fuzz Townshend bought this Daimler Fleetline bus from the Transport Museum Wythall
“My first word was ‘bus’,” says Fuzz.
“My foster family lived on the Walsall Corporation’s bus route, and from a very young age I was fascinated by the variety of different models they operated.”
Ronald Edgeley-Cox was the Corporation’s chief engineer in the 1950s and ’60s and it was his experimental bus fleets, including the first 30ft-long double-deckers in the country, that fuelled Fuzz’s life-long love of buses.
That passion led to an apprenticeship at the age of 16, qualifying four years later as West Midlands Passenger Transport’s youngest mechanic.
Fuzz hops in the driver’s seat every few months to take his Fleetline to events
