Each driver comes into contact with 150,000 people a year. It is a unique opportunity to make a difference in the world.

If you’ve ever ridden public transit, you know that when people clamber aboard a bus they seem turned off, as if the time spent travelling is a kind of numbed out limbo realm that doesn’t really count as part of their real life.

In addition to the impassive faces, the atmosphere in the bus is permeated with a dismal, unhappy energy as if it were full of people heading for a day of hard labour at the salt mines rather than what I believe is the truth: that they are participants in the miracle of another precious day in their lives.

My mission is simple: I know that as a bus driver-or in fact anyone who works in the public-is in a position to make a positive difference in the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. How I endeavoured to bring real fun and joy into people’s daily commute and, by extension, into their lives is what my book Bus Tales: How to Change the World is all about.