Meet Bus Aunty, the nurse turning London’s doubledeckers into a TikTok sensation
To her nearly 300,000 TikTok followers, she is Bus Aunty, the unlikely star of short videos that celebrate London’s streets and, above all, its doubledeckers.Now Bemi Orojuogun, 56, has urged her army of fans to share her appreciation for the hard-working bus drivers who keep the capital running.The mental health nurse has been overwhelmed by the response to the quirky, bite-size videos she began posting on social media last year.They feature clips of her standing at the roadside, sometimes at landmarks such as Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus, as buses drive past.“My love for London red buses started a long time ago, when I first came to this country in the early 90s,” said Orojuogun, who is from Nigeria.
“There are four parts of London that I really, really love: red buses, red telephone booths, all the London bridges and Big Ben.But buses are main my love.”She showcased this enthusiasm last March, posting a video of a 241 bus driving past her in Plaistow, east London.For Orojuogun, there was nothing unusual about the video but it quickly racked up millions of views when it was shared worldwide.“I received a call from my daughter saying: ‘Mummy, you’re going viral’,” Orojuogun said.
“I loved the way young people really liked the video, their comments and the way they were reposting it, and then I did more of it,Some of them love to guess where I’ll be going next and suggest where I should visit next, and that’s how it all started,”Orojuogun’s most popular video has amassed 48,1m views,The one-minute clip shows her standing in front of a bus stop in Greenwich as a series of buses drive past her to the soundtrack of Back for Good by Take That.
“It’s still all a dream and a shock to me,” she said of the popularity of her videos.“A lot of celebrities have been in my DMs, congratulating me, telling me they’re proud of me.But not only that, I’m so glad the way social media has accepted me, the way they have come behind me and supported me.”Orojuogun rarely speaks in her videos, instead beaming into the camera with her distinctive glasses, colourful headscarves and dangly earrings.She often appears perilously close to the kerb, leading some viewers to fear she may be standing in the road.
But she insists it is all in the camera angles and she is always on the pavement.Her popularity has landed her advertising deals with Transport for London, Ikea and Burberry, which described her in a campaign last month as “our fare lady”.But her motivation for posting videos remains her love of the capital and its buses which she said allowed her to get to work during the pandemic.“I love those buses,” she said.“Since Covid, the buses have been my main means of travelling, from home to work, shopping, everywhere.
London is a beautiful place to see from the top of the bus,That’s my belief,I love it,And those red buses, take it from me, they represent London,I just wish we loved them a bit more.
I wish people could love them the way I do.”Sign up to Headlines UKGet the day’s headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morningafter newsletter promotionOrojuogun is using her platform to encourage her followers and the wider public to value bus drivers.Through her accounts, she has befriended some and even had lunch with them.“We need to appreciate those bus drivers,” she said.“I’m sure you quite remember during Covid, a lot of them died.
I think a lot of us, we go on buses and we just take them for granted, ‘just take me from A to Z’.“There’s nothing wrong with saying ‘good morning’, ‘good afternoon’, or ‘thank you’ when you get out of the bus.That’s just my view.Since I started going around London, I meet so many of them, we get into conversations, and I love them and I think they’re doing a fantastic job.”
UK court freezes £150m of assets of collapsed Prax Lindsey oil refinery owner
A court has frozen £150m of assets belonging to the owner of the collapsed Prax Lindsey oil refinery, an oil tycoon whose whereabouts have been a mystery since the plant’s sudden financial implosion earlier this year.Administrators sifting through the wreckage of five companies in the Prax empire are suing Winston Soosaipillai, better known by his middle names Sanjeev Kumar, for breach of his duties as a director after the energy group’s failure.On Wednesday freshly published court filings revealed that a judge at the high court in July granted the companies’ request for a “freezing injunction” against Soosaipillai.The order prevents him from removing from England and Wales, or selling, assets up to the value of £150m. If he fails to comply, he can be imprisoned or fined or his assets can be seized
Energy users ‘could save £5bn a year’ if gas plants are removed from market
The government could save energy users £5bn a year by overhauling the electricity market to stop gas-fired power stations from setting the wholesale price for electricity, according to the former energy tsar.Britain relies on gas plants for about a quarter of its annual electricity use, but they play a much greater role during spells of low wind and low solar generation.Removal of gas plants from the market could lead to a drop in household electricity bills by up to £1.7bn a year by 2028, according to a research report. Energy costs for businesses and industrial users could fall by £3
Rescue plan at Thames Water is still too murky | Nils Pratley
The wannabe new owners of Thames Water say they are “fully committed to a new transparent and collaborative relationship with regulators”. Jolly good. Unfortunately, this embrace of transparency does not appear to extend to the poor old customers.At this late stage in the dance to decide Thames’s future, you’d expect London & Valley Water – the banner under which the consortium of creditors now sail – to opt for straight-talking and openness. Their pitch to rescue Thames, after all, rests on the analysis that they are the folk to inject the necessary pragmatism into a company that has lived a hand-to-mouth existence for years while promoting fantasy turnaround plans
Lush closes all its UK stores in protest over starvation in Gaza
The cosmetics retailer Lush has closed its UK shops, factories and website in protest over starvation in Gaza.A statement appeared on its website and on posters on shop windows on Wednesday, which read: “Stop starving Gaza, we are closed in solidarity”, while its flagship spa on London’s Oxford Street was marked as “temporarily closed” on Google Maps.In an interview with LBC radio, the co-founder Mark Constantine said the company’s estimated losses as a result of the closure would be about £300,000. While offering his support for the decision, he added: “It would be nice to be able to pay for food to go into Gaza, rather than just sacrificing [profits].”The statement released on the Lush website asks for customers’ forgiveness for any inconvenience, but says that “many of our customers share the same anxiety about the situation in Gaza”
Bank chief warns against ‘exaggerating’ rise in UK borrowing costs
The governor of the Bank of England has cautioned against “exaggerating” the impact of a steep rise in the UK’s long-term borrowing costs, which he said was part of a global trend.Andrew Bailey told MPs the Treasury had continued to borrow at the same interest rate for most of the year despite a rise in the rate on 30-year bonds to a 27-year high.Bailey’s intervention will bring some relief to Rachel Reeves, who is under pressure from rising debt financing costs ahead of a budget which on Wednesday she set for 26 November.The governor said the government’s switch to borrowing over five or 10 years rather than 30 years meant its borrowing costs had remained flat this year, and commentators should not “over-focus” on the figure.“There is a lot of dramatic commentary on this but I wouldn’t exaggerate the 30-year bond rate,” he said
Hackers linked to M&S breach claim responsibility for Jaguar Land Rover cyber-attack
A group of English-speaking hackers linked to the Marks & Spencer cyber-attack has claimed responsibility for an attack on Jaguar Land Rover.A channel on the Telegram platform posted a screenshot of what appeared to be the carmaker’s internal IT systems, as well as a news article detailing the hack.The name of the Telegram channel is a combination of three English language speaking, or western-based, hacking groups known as Scattered Spider, Lapsus$ and ShinyHunters.Scattered Spider, a collective of teenage and twentysomething hackers, has been blamed for attacks this year on British retailers M&S, Co-op and Harrods. Four people including three teenagers were arrested at UK addresses in July as part of an investigation into the retail cyber-attacks
Trump fortune balloons by billions after family firm’s crypto token starts trading
Parents could get alerts if children show acute distress while using ChatGPT
AI industry pours millions into politics as lawsuits and feuds mount
Meet Bus Aunty, the nurse turning London’s doubledeckers into a TikTok sensation
Clanker! This slur against robots is all over the internet – but is it offensive?
The good and bad of machine learning | Letters