User Reviews

Olive and Arthur are constantly complaining about the state of their room, so Stan bribes Nobby at the depot into letting him have a couple of tins of paint. The room is duly decorated, and nice it looks too. But there's a snag - Arthur has forgotten to mix hardener in with the paint, hence it is still wet when he and Olive go to bed. Stumbling about in the dark, the short-sighted Olive leaves green hand prints everywhere...

This plot later provided a story element in the film 'Holiday On The Buses', only then it was a holiday camp chalet that got painted. Lynn Dalby went on to play 'Hazel' in the hit series 'Budgie' starring Adam Faith. Funniest moment - Olive asking an incredulous Stan if its not too late to put the hardener in the paint. His reply: "Hang on love, I'll scrape it off the walls and put it back in the tins!".

Arthur and Olive's bedroom is in need of decorating however Arthur cannot afford the quote from the decorating firm. Stan offers to paint it himself, however the only paint to hand is green or yellow, as that is the colours used for painting the buses. Later that evening, the decorating gets underway however Arthur has neglected to add hardener to the paint, meaning the walls are unable to dry. So now what must Stan do?

'Busmen's Perks' is one of my favourite 'On The Buses' episodes, partly because I can relate to stress and frustration of things going wrong during decorating ( I renovated my house when me and my wife bought it five years ago and many's a time things went wrong such as paint getting spilt, plaster not sticking or tiles getting broken ). The scene in which Olive covers the newly painted walls with green hand-prints ( she touched the wet paint in the dark ) later was used in 'Holiday On The Buses' three years after this episode went out, though, as has been posted by another reviewer, it was a chalet that got redecorated on that occasion, not a bedroom.

The underrated ( and sadly departed ) Norman Mitchell plays Nobby, the maintenance man at the depot who provides Stan with the paint. Lynn Dalby from 'Budgie' appears fleetingly as Janet, the manager's short skirted secretary ( wasn't it a lovely moment when she leaned over the manager's car? ).

Funniest bit? Stan accidentally breaking the bottle of paint thinners that he has smuggled in the cab of his bus. However he cannot get out otherwise he'll be nabbed by Blakey. Poor Stan is left struggling to breathe in the cab full of toxic fumes!