A Transport of Delight

Good evening
Need I introduce the piano, the well-known pianist, composer
Linguist also contains lanolin, Donald Swann
I must be Michael Flanders; we write songs
Donald Swan here writes the music, I write the words

Some of these songs you may possibly have heard in reviews
Like Glyne Bourne and so on. Others
Others you're less likely to have heard unless you patronise this Palace of Culture before
We've written the ones we like to sing ourselves
That's what we're still going to do
We feel we're following this trend towards simplification in the theatres, you know
There have been reviews without scenery, there have been reviews without costume
This is a review without scenery, without costumes, without costumes
Except what Moss Bross is very kind and loan-less
Even without a cast, which does make everything very much easy, we find also cheaper

This is, at the backyard
I draw your attention to it, it's not a curtain
It's a photograph of a curtain by Tony Armstrong Jones
Welcome

Welcome from Bethibas to our ferago
E-carts are imperfections with your thoughts, to coin a phrase
Think, think when we talk of horses
That you see them printing their proud hoofs on the receiving earth
Don't think we do actually talk of horses
This song isn't about horses
This one is about buses
Well, buses we've all seen

Great big red things rushing about
We have one outside here actually about 20 minutes ago
Did you see it? (I did, yeah)
With private on it, looking very lost
I can remember when it was a general
This was long, uh

If you laugh and applaud, it means you're terribly old
And we have to go terribly slowly today
Omnibus, my friend, Mr Swann, informs me, comes from the Latin, omnibus
Meaning two or four, by, with, or from everybody, which is a very good description
This, uh, well, this song is, uh, about a bus
It's wittily subtitled, I thought of this, A Transport Of Delight

Some people like a motorbike
Some say "A tram for me!"
Or for bonnie army lorry
They'd lay them down and dee
Such means of locomotion
Seem rather dull to us
The driver and conductor of
A London omnibus

Hold very tight please, ting ting!
Hold very tight please, ting ting!

When you are lost in London
And you don't know where you are
You'll hear my voice a-calling
"Pass further down the car!"
And very soon you'll find yourself
Inside the terminus
In a London Transport, diesel-engined
Ninety-seven horsepower omnibus

Along the Queen's great highway
I drive my merry load
At twenty miles per hour
In the middle of the road

We like to drive in convoys
We're most gregarious
The big six-wheeler, scarlet-painted
London Transport, diesel-engined
Ninety-seven horsepower omnibus

Earth has not anything to show more fair
Mind the stairs lady!
Mind the stairs!
Mind the stairs!

Earth has not anything to show more fair
Any more fares? (Any more fares?)
Any more fares? Any more fares?
Any more fares?

When cabbies try to pass me
Before they overtakes
I sticks me flippin' hand out
As I jams on all me brakes

Then jackal taxi drivers
Can only swear and cuss
Behind that monarch of the road
Observer of the highway code
That big six-wheeler, scarlet-painted
London Transport, diesel-engined
Ninety-seven horsepower omnibus

I stops when I'm requested
Although it spoils the ride
So he can shout "Get out of it!
"We're full right up inside"

We don't ask much for wages
We only want fair shares
So cut down all the stages
And stick up all the fares
If tickets cost a pound apiece
Why should you make a fuss?

It's worth it just to ride inside
That thirty-foot-long by ten-foot-wide
Inside that monarch of the road
Observer of the highway code
That big six-wheeler, scarlet-painted
London Transport, diesel-engined
Ninety-seven horsepower
Ninety-seven horsepower omnibus

Hold very tight please!

It's recently been adopted as the marching song of the Underground Resistance Movement
May we ask, could you hear that more or less all right at the top there?
All right for quantity
There's nothing we can do about the quality at this stage
Not until Swann's voice breaks, anyway

People make an awful lot of fast nowadays, don't they?
About the quality of the sound they listen to, have you noticed?
They spend all that time trying to get the exact effect of an orchestra actually playing in their sitting room
Personally, I can't think of anything I should hate more
Than to have an orchestra actually playing in my sitting room
They seem to like it, and it's about them that we've written this next song
I mention this in case anyone should think the title is perhaps a little near the bone