Man Met journalism student hosts BBC radio show about taking the night bus around Manchester
- Featured image credit: Ian Burke
A Man Met journalism student is featuring on his own podcast episode on BBC Radio 4 about his journeys on Manchester’s night buses.
Speaking exclusively to NQ, student Ian Burke shared his journey to becoming the latest voice of Radio 4’s Illuminated, where he celebrates Manchester’s night buses in a trip across the city.
“It’s like an experimental documentary, there’s all sorts of weird and wonderful things on there,” he said.
For his podcast, Ian travels on Manchester’s V1 bus from Oxford Road – a trip that didn’t see him home until past 2am as he documented the oddities and interests of the journey from Manchester to Leigh.
“I’m not built for staying up until the early hours,” he laughed.
“I’m an old man! But we got some nice background noise, some general chitter-chatter of people walking around, but there was also a group of rowdy students and one of them rumbled us right away: ‘Oh look, it’s BBC News!’”
A leap of faith and an egg sandwich
In the days before Illuminated, Ian hosted his own bus podcast for over a year. Slower Travel, currently on hiatus at its 25th episode, saw Ian document his journeys up and down the country across the nation’s bus network.
“When I’m going out, I’m taking notes and notes and notes,” he said. “It’s ridiculous. But the thing is, you’re taking everything in at once. I love hearing accents change as you go. I love going to bakeries and seeing what local treats they have.”
It was an idea borne over two decades before picking up a microphone. At 22, Ian recalled jolting awake in the early hours of the morning, mind racing.
“I had an actual dream about going around the coast of Britain by bus,” he said.
“I woke Eleanor up – my then-girlfriend, now wife. Great idea. It was about 2.30am or something, and I said, ‘let’s go around the coast of Britain by bus’, to which she went, ‘Eurgh…’.
“I took that to mean: that’s a great idea, tell me more about it in the morning.”
He went on to buy a road atlas, in which he plotted out a winding trail across Britain’s coastline with only the vague hope there would be buses available along the way.
He also planned a test round, a trip to his grandparents’ caravan in Wales. After four buses, eight hours, and an egg sandwich in Warrington, he made it to a phone box in Rhyl to call Eleanor – he’d made it. They were ready.
“It was 15 June, 2002. We left the house at something like half-seven in the morning, and bumped into the next door neighbour at the bus stop. He asked why we had backpacks, and I said, ‘we’re going on a trip around the coast of Britain by bus’. ‘Are you mad?’ ‘No, honestly, we are’.
“It was quite the leap of faith, to be honest, and it was the best thing we’ve ever done. I loved it.”
Travel writing
Ian’s idea to start a podcast came later. In 2017, he and Eleanor found themselves on the road again, this time in Bristol.
He explained: “There was this fellow who got on the bus to Chippenham, and he looked like Martin Bell. It was at the uni there, and there were these two girls fawning over every word he said.
“They asked him what he had to do in the summer,” he continued, before dropping into a received pronunciation accent: “And he went, ‘I guess I’ll just get into travel writing.’
“And it really got my hackles up! I was thinking, oh, it’s that easy, is it? If you sort of click your fingers, you can just do a bit of travel writing. And clearly, for him, it was. I’ve seen it through my entire working life, where people have failed upwards because they’ve got connections. Generally speaking, working class people don’t have those kind of connections, and can’t get them because they’re not in those circles in the first place.
“It wound me up that he could just click his fingers and go and do whatever he fancied. I thought, well, you know what? Eff you! I’m going to get into travel writing – and you can stick it up your arse!”
A call from Radio 4
“I had a phone call out of the blue in September from a producer, saying ‘I hear you like buses’. And I said ‘no, no I don’t.’”
Despite spending over a year hosting his own bus-travel podcast before he went on to celebrate them on Radio 4, surprisingly, Ian’s work never stemmed from a particular love for transport.
“I don’t like buses, I like bus routes,” he said. “And I think it all sort of stems from when I was little. Other kids would read, you know, The Gruffalo, or whatever; I was there with the A-to-Z.
“Before I knew it, I knew all the major roads through Manchester just by being a total nerd. Then I progressed to my dad’s road atlas.
“It was ludicrous, if you ask me! But that’s what I was interested in when I was a little boy. I’ve still got dozens and dozens and dozens of Ordinance Survey maps stacked around the house, and I love them all to bits.”
‘A serenity to travelling at night’
Ahead of this weekend’s episode of Illuminated, Ian hopes an episode on the night bus will highlight a different type of intrigue than the typical day journeys of Slower Travel.
“You get great views over in Leigh: at nighttime, you can see Manchester city centre, 10 or 12 miles in the distance, with these big limbs reaching up into the sky. It does feel like you’re seeing things you’re not meant to see.
“There’s a serenity to travelling at night. It’s just people travelling along in this little yellow tin, going about their business, you know. No aggro, no argy-bargy, no funny business.
“You go from A to B, but you’re taking the rest of the alphabet a lot of the time as well. It’s interesting. It’s an interesting way of seeing the world.”
BBC Radio 4’s Illuminated airs this Sunday at 7.15pm.