On The Buses star Reg Varney dies at 92



Reg Varney as the 'unlucky in love' bus driver Stan Butler

Reg Varney died yesterday at the age of 92.

The veteran actor best known for his starring role in 1970s TV sitcom On the Buses had been admitted to a nursing home a few weeks earlier after developing a chest infection.

His daughter Jeanne Marley, 59, said he died peacefully just before 2pm yesterday.

Born in the East End of London, the son of a rubber factory worker, Varney started his career as a piano player and by the age of 14 was playing in working men's clubs.

He joined the Royal Electrical Engineers during the Second World War and afterwards became a music hall entertainer, working with Benny Hill among others.

In 1961 he got the role as a foreman in a TV series called The Rag Trade, followed by another comedy role in Beggar My Neighbour.



He also appeared in the 1966 film The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery.

Varney with On the Buses co-stars Stephen Lewis, left, who played Inspector Blake and Rob Grant, who played Jack Harper



But he was best known to millions of viewers as Stan Butler, a long-suffering bus driver who had no luck with the ladies and lived at home with his overbearing mother, sister and lazy brother-in-law.



The show followed the antics of Stan and his friend Jack Harper on the Number 11 bus as they battled against the formidable Inspector Blake.

Varney with Grant again and Doris Hare, right, Anna Karen, and Michael Robbins



The ITV sitcom began in 1969 and ran for seven series - even resulting in three spin-off films.

The first of these, also called On The Buses, was released in 1971 and became Britain's top box-office film at the time.

Reg was the first person in the world to use an ATM - at Barlcays in north London, 1967



Varney also had a rather interesting claim to fame.

When the world's first ATM opened at Barclays Bank in Enfield, north London in June 1967, Varney became the very first person to use the machine

In his later years, Varney took on a number of film roles and went abroad on tour with a cabaret show and a stage version of On The Buses, before retiring in Devon in the early 1990s due to health problems.

The comic actor had lived alone following the death of his wife Lillian in 2002.

He is survived by his daughter, two grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.

Mrs Marley said last night: 'He's always been very young for his age, when he was in On The Buses he was playing a 35-year-old, but he was actually 50.'