Radio Times: Review by:; Alison Graham

The volunteers who staff the so-called SOS Bus in Colchester, Essex, are saints. Every weekend, cheerful and non-judgemental, they minister to the hammered. The bus, funded by local pubs and clubs, is a treatment centre for the walking wounded and the plastered, somewhere to be patched up and to throw up. The bus also helps to ease the burden on overloaded hospital A&E departments.

The volunteers (a swimming instructor and an advertising account manager, among them) staple up wounds, rub the backs of vomiting girls and, in one case, tend a man dressed as an Oompa Loompa. “I don’t know how to revive an Oompa Loompa,” says the bus angel, philosophically.

About this programme

1/3. Documentary following paramedics and volunteers as they travel around Colchester, Essex, on the `booze bus', dealing with the town's binge drinkers. Funded by local bars and clubs, the service deals with everything from accidental falls, to the aftermath of alcohol- and-drug-fuelled fights. Thousands of revellers head to the town at the weekend, and it is left to the SOS team to pick up the pieces.