Harry Blundred, one of the most colourful and influential busmen of the 1980s and 1990s, died in Barbados on 23 August, aged 75. DAVID LEEDER, chief executive of Metropolitan European Transport and a former senior director with National Express and First, spent three memorable years working with him and recalls the experience of running high-frequency minibuses in Devon.
Late 1988 I spotted a recruitment advertisement in Bus Business that caught my eye like a discarded £5 note. ‘Blundred Needs Some Brains’, it said, ‘apply Belgrave Road, Exeter’. Even in the buccaneering days immediately after deregulation, this was unconventional. I had to apply.
Several weeks later I found myself in Devon General’s boardroom and my first encounter with Harry Blundred – chairman, managing director and ‘proprietor’ of Transit Holdings. A second interview followed rapidly, held – typically for Devon General then – in a pub. The job was mine.
To say that Harry Blundred was slightly unconventional is like saying Sir Brian Souter is slightly Scottish. Formal meetings were rare. Control was exercised by frequent phone calls and walkabouts. He had no office as such, only the boardroom. Harry sat at one end of the long table…
