All you needed was £1.
A pound to make new memories on nights out. A quid to explore all that Manchester has to offer, from the leafy suburb of Didsbury, to the cheap student nights in Fallowfield, onto the hustle and bustle of the city centre.
That’s exactly what uber-cheap Magic Bus tickets gave to generations of students in Manchester – including myself.
But there won’t be any more students making memories on the Magic Bus, because all Greater Manchester services are now controlled by the Bee Network.
That means the Magic Bus’ iconic wizard and star liveries have disappeared.
They’ve been replaced by the uniform yellow Bee Network buses running the same 142, 143, and 147 routes along the Wilmslow Road bus corridor. Since January 6, passengers can only buy a standard £2 ticket, part of the move to simpler fares across all bus routes and tram lines.
The last Magic Buses leave Hyde Road Bus Depot
It’s no exaggeration to say the Magic Bus used to be the primary method of transport for thousands of students at university. Many, like me, would travel from their south Manchester homes in Withington, Fallowfield or Rusholme, to the university or the city centre.
Because it was so cheap — a single was £1, and a weekly ticket stayed between £5-10 during my studies — taxis seemed incomprehensibly expensive, only reserved for getting home in the early hours when the weather was dreadful.
The cheap fares weren’t the Magic Bus’ only attraction. Ask any frequent rider and they will tell you about the famous ‘characters’ on the bus who they saw regularly.
In my case, I used to frequently see the same man who would travel on the Magic Bus with live chickens in a cardboard box. He would get off in Rusholme, where there’s a proliferation of butchers.
Folklore from other students also drew you onboard. Those who graduated before me told of the ‘man with the rabbits’.
The man, they said, would board near Platt Fields Park wearing a backpack. Once the journey began towards town, he would pull three rabbits out of the bag, and gently place them on the seat next to him. The docile rabbits would happily sit there until it was time for their owner to hop off. Just before he did, they would be swiftly returned to the backpack after enjoying their journey.
The last Magic Buses leave Hyde Road Bus Depot
But while ‘characters’ would come and go, some things remained the same.
The last Magic Bus of the day, which was usually between 3-4am, would see strangers happily mingle and chat after a skinful at a nightclub. It sometimes felt like the smoking ban didn’t apply on these nights, as the odd drunk passenger puffed away despite the rules.
And although it felt like you were forging a deep bond with a like-minded soul on the 143, by the next afternoon whatever you talked about was very hazy.
Eavesdropping on other people’s conversations was another must on the Magic Bus.
It was always fascinating to me to hear how university exam stress affected different student passengers. In some ways, the pressure provided an insightful study on how the human brain copes with adversity.
Some meditated. Some decided their 17-minute journey was just enough time to successfully revise. Some, presumably scared witless, swelled with bravado and declared they hadn’t needed to study — either because the exam would presumably be easy, they were too clever for it, or because they’d already resigned themselves to a re-sit exam in a few months.
They are just some of the memories I have the Magic Bus to thank for. Thousands of others do, too.
But after the Magic Bus made its final journey, the memories are the only thing we have left behind.