Like me, I suspect that your eyes often go into super high definition mode anytime a bus appears in a television programme or advertisement. "Have they got the bus right?" Mrs M will often ask, in tones that manage to convey both sympathy and a hint of "does it really matter?" as she guesses I'm about to suggest that a Routemaster in pre-1959 London or a postwar RT in the 1930s is as anachronistic as some of the later idioms used in scripts for Call the Midwife set in the 1960s. With adverts, the challenge often is trying to guess where some have been filmed. One ten or more years ago had Stagecoach single-deckers in the background, in the era when they wore stripes rather than swoops, but on these the bodywork was unfamiliar, and the blue stripes were a different shade. That's because whatever was being advertised - and creative agencies take note, some of us remember the bus and not the name of their client's name - was filmed in New Zealand. Which brings me to a recent ad that Mike Fenton also has noticed. It's for Sky Mobile and features the Beach Boys' Wouldn't It Be Nice as soundtrack to the actress Lily James embarking on a fanciful journey that takes her instantly from A to B. The sequences that Mike and I also couldn't help recognising involve a Leyland National of blessed memory. First we see the rear nearside corner, then she boards and alights almost immediately at a funfair. Most of this is Leyland National as we knew and maybe loved it, including the unique design of folding doors in which the glazing of the leaves was arranged in matching pairs. The puzzling part is that this two-door vehicle's exit is not directly in front of the rear axle but in the bay immediately behind the front one. Not a layout for which the highly inflexible Lillyhall production line was noted.
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