Looking forward to the Boris Bus

I'm not English, even though I cheer on the footie and cricket teams. I don't consider myself British, even though I cheer on the Olympic team. What I am and will always be is a Londoner. London is the worlds greatest city and yes I've spent a fair bit of time in most of the other candidates. I wouldn't live anywhere else. Having spent a week in North Yorkshire, only reemphasised how much I love London.

When I was a kid there were three things that set London apart. Our Taxis were different, not just cars with a lamp on top. Our tube trains were different (tube shaped, not just rail carriages that happened to be underground). Most of all though our buses were different. When my brother moved to Chelmsford, I can remember the horror of seeing an Eastern Counties bus. It was the wrong shape and the wrong colour. It was UGLY. As I travelled more, the pattern was repeated. Whenever I returned to London, there was no greater satisfaction than being in a taxi, a tube train or a London Bus. I've no great interest in them, they just felt right.

The last time I travelled on a Routemaster bus was the no 13 from Swiss Cottage to Golders Greer. This was on the day of the 7/7 bombings as I struggled to get home from a business meeting at Debenhams in Oxford Street. At the time they were being phased out and it seemed a rather poignant way to travel home on that awful day.

When Boris announced that he'd bring the Routemaster back, I thought it was a gimmick, to be quietly shelved after the election with a "we costed it and its too expensive". It has struck me that Boris has different ideas. He wants a visible lasting legacy. I saw the plans and I was impressed. London needs Icons. If we fade into the grey of all the other cities in the world, identikit lookalikes with a couple of keynote buildings, we've lost it. We invented public transport. The word "Metro" used around the world for underground railways comes from Londons "Metropolitan Railway". The word in Russian for a station is "Vauxhall" after the Tsar visited the newly opened Vauxhall Bridge station.

As an artist and an engineer, I think that the idea for the new bus is great. I'm the last person to praise Boris, I think he's hopeless, but I believe everyone has 1 great idea and his is the new bus.