Houston Ramm

Early Years

Born in Thetford, Norfolk in 1955 (ten years after the fictitious James Hayne) I moved to Glasgow in 1968, Hull in 1982 and the Rochdale area in 1986, where I settled.

I left school at the age of 16 – there was a slight administrative issue when I arrived in Glasgow which meant I was put in the wrong year so completed sixth form a few days before my seventeenth birthday. I left on the Friday, and the following Monday was on the payroll of Scottish Omnibuses Limited at Buchanan Street Bus Station. What was originally a Summer job became a permanent one, and I spent the next couple of years in the charting office helping to deal with the hoards of holidaymakers and other users of the Scottish Bus Group express service network. All done by hand, and many services including the London routes had individually reserved seats.

Career in the Coach Industry

Following a short stint with a travel agent and four years working in road haulage – one high quality operator, Bowker of Blackburn, and one at the other end of scale – I returned to the coach industry to work for Park’s of Hamilton. This was the era of black Volvo B58’s including the beautiful Viewmasters.

Due to family issues I needed a Monday to Friday 9 to 5 job and so left Parks to work outside the industry. But I was soon bored and one weekend wrote an article for Coachmart. A couple of weeks later it was published but I heard nothing from them for a couple of months. Then, out of the blue I received a phone call from Coachmart’s owner, Terry Beanland, asking me if I could cover a job in Glasgow the next day – luckily, the job was at SMT in Glasgow and Bob Flockhart there knew how to get hold of me. For the next six years, firstly as a freelance and then as Managing Editor, I worked at Coachmart and saw it grow into something rather special. In 1986 it was sold to East Midlands Allied Press (EMAP) and I went to work for Tony Lavin, eventually becoming MD of ATL Holdings. Following the sale of ATL’s various companies to National Express and Drawlane, I moved to coach shuttle holiday company, Impact Holidays, and stayed there until its demise in 1993.

A ten year stint as a coach dealer followed, following which I came out of the industry and have spent the last twenty years buying, selling and helping to operate a small group of hotels owned by the Lavin family. The hotels have done well, but the decision was made to sell these and so, at the youthful age of 70, I have worked with the owners to sell these and potentially have some time on my hands, hence the decision to start writing again.

Today

I still live in the Rochdale area and, in addition to my management consultancy work and writing, I buy and sell vehicles on a relatively modest scale (see my website www.hrvehiclesalesrochdale.co.uk) – just because I enjoy it, most of the time at least. So, if you need a decent used car/van/small minibus, you know where to come!

When I’m not working I am looking after my wife and 11-year old son. The latter is already showing worrying signs of being interested in anything on wheels, but also anything with a keyboard! I suppose that’s good.

I hope you enjoy reading my first book, forward with Avanti. There are another couple in the pipeline, both of which will be based in the industry – but the next one, before we return to Avanti Travel, is something completely different.

Please follow my blogs on the website. After some thought I have decided to split them into a historical blog – hopefully some of our readers will contribute to this – which will initially look at buses and coaches which Avanti might have operated, so that readers less familiar with coach operations in the 1970s will have some idea of what we were contending with.

The second blog will be my take on current events in the industry – views which not everyone will agree with and you are all welcome to challenge – but politely please!

I hope you enjoy both the books and the website!

Houston Ramm

August 2025