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.”
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Orojuogun 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.”
