Creative


This past year has brought about the largest number of Creative Cabbies stories since we started running this department in the paper. What a pleasure it is to re-read these items – and to contemplate which one(s) should be winners. That’s tricky in itself, as one doesn’t wish to den- igrate anyone’s creative efforts by putting them in some sort of league table.


However, we certainly can have another look at who’s in the run- ning: we had several authors during the past twelve months, such as the Billericay driver David Hollingsworth in our January issue who sold over 7,000 copies of his crime novel as an e-book after having been rejected by publishers... go for it! Then in June we reported on retired York taxi driver David Corbishley, who cur- rently is on his third novel since having retired as a driver.


We had two more authors in our November and December issues: a novelist in Brentwood, Dave Crouch (loads of talented people called Dave last year!), was featured in the former edition with his book about football hooligans, and in December we told readers how Cambridge licence holder Errol Ballantyne set out his mem- oirs of experience in the trade; always a good formula, as they do advise that one gets the best results if one writes about that which one is familiar... doesn’t one agree, having penned a large degree of the content of this humble tome for over 21 years. (We’ve al- ways told folk: ‘If you like our paper, we wrote it; if you don’t like it, we don’t know anything about it!’)


Novelty value always comes into play with our Creative Cabbies, and you couldn’t get more novel than last year’s collection: we had singing Nottingham cabbie Derek Chambers in March, in July we featured Radstock driver Ray McKeegan who is doing voiceovers for Radio 2. Into the summer, and in August we had Canterbury transport boss Andrew Mangnall who, in addition to running an up-market chauffeur firm, also started up Canoe Wild, a sort of waxi service with a difference on the river Stour.


In September we featured a London cabbie who won’t stop talk- ing... Hang on, you must be saying - what’s different about that?! No, this is Mark McGowan, aka “The Artist Taxi Driver”, whose gift of the gab has turned into an entertainment art form. Also in the Smoke we had singing London cabbie Scott Neave in our No- vember issue.


Then how’s this for super-cool: a full four years after having trans- ported Genesis group member Peter Gabriel in their taxi, singer Lisa Jen Brown of Welsh folk-inspired group 9Bach bags a record deal with them! We covered this (oh, pardon the pun... cov- ered...get it) in December.


So come on, where are the top dogs? As we said, this is a diffi- cult one... but for sheer novelty value coupled with determination (plus our desire to try out the menu), we have to place the York drivers Sanjai Joseph, Dinu Abraham and Jalco Jose as runners- up. We featured their Coconut Lagoon restaurant in the January issue, and told of their enterprise in joining up with chef Saji Kurlan in opening a restaurant featuring dishes from the Karala region of southern India.


Joint runner-up this time is our Graduate Grandad from the February edition: 78-year old Gerald Nathanson achieved a 2.2 in British History from Birkbeck Uni- versity a full 60 years since he’d first embarked on ed- ucational endeavours as a youngster, and his son gave him a surprise visit all the way from New Zealand to join in his graduation ceremony. Fantastic or what.


How can one choose a winner? We’re going with Ed- inburgh driver Kenny Taylor, whose comedy talents were reported on in the January issue. For a start, that particular edition was featuring all things Scot- tish, including a consultation on local legislation. But mainly, Kenny “The Shuffler” was raved about not only by his passengers, but also by nearly 6,000 (probably more than twice that now!) viewers of his clip on YouTube, where he not only tells jokes but uses puppets, false noses and comedy voices.


It is said that it is more difficult to pull off good com- edy than any other form of entertainment, so we applaud The Shuffler from the balcony... long may he continue raising a smile.


Alongside is the story we reported on in January’s edition on page 6.


PAGE 68


PHTM JANUARY 2014


EDINBURGH DRIVER ENTERTAINS PASSENGERS IN NOVEL WAYS


An Edinburgh taxi driv- er has turned YouTube sensation after his in- cab comedy routine clocked up thousands of views online. Kenny “The Shuffler” Taylor has been dubbed Edinburgh’s funniest cabbie after a two-minute video clip - that sees him handle puppets, don a false nose and do comedy voices - went viral. The footage sees the stand-up cabbie play- ing imaginary drums and dancing to Queen’s You’re My Best Friend while driv- ing down Princess Street. He then sur- prises his backseat audience by popping on a novelty flashing


nose before entertain- ing passers-by at traffic lights on Lothi- an Road with two colourful hand-pup- pets.


He tells his passen- gers: “I’m known as the Shuffler. Mental, mental, chicken orien- tal. Psycho, psycho chicken in the micro.” Sean Horsburgh, one of those in the cab who uploaded the clip to the web, posted the caption: “So jumped in this cab yesterday hungover... And this is what happened haha best taxi ride ever!” According to the Scotsman, the clip has been viewed more than 5,600 times. One admiring former


passenger told how the comic cabbie’s high jinks had made his night. Thomas Figg, 29, stepped into Mr Tay- lor’s taxi on a recent Thursday evening. “It was pretty much the most interesting taxi ride I have ever been on,” he said. “My friend didn’t know what to make of it. I felt like I had walked right into a Fringe show.


“The puppets were amazing. He told jokes, then when the taxi stopped, his pup- pet would suddenly appear next to him. It was almost tempting to keep going on down the road, just to see what he did next.”


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