Painting the town red
When Radio 2 presenter Zoe Ball arrived for work at Wogan House in central London, she couldn’t quite believe her eyes.
When she saw ‘two chaps painting the Radio 2 postbox,’ she said she ‘just had to stop and have a chat’ as she had ‘never seen anyone painting a postbox before.’
‘There were two chaps painting the Radio 2 postbox,’ said Zoe. ‘I just had to stop and have a chat as I’d never seen anyone painting a postbox before.
The ‘two chaps’ in question were Ricky and Tony, who said that between them, they paint up to 15 postboxes every night and the ‘pillarbox red’ paint they use, dries in just 10 minutes.
Zoe was so impressed with the pair that she invited them onto her BBC Breakfast Show.
Ricky told Zoe that he’d been painting postboxes for ‘around five years’ and it could be ‘lovely work depending on the weather.’
He also described how some postbox fans liked to film him and Tony on the job and the perils of paint spillages, specifically on van floors and particularly when using the special pink paint used when stripping the paint off postboxes.
Play the MP3 to hear the full interview
A Royal Mail postbox stands within half a mile of more than 98% of the UK population. We have around 115,500 pillar, wall, and lamp boxes across the UK. They are as familiar as they are practically useful and each has a story to tell. They are also an icon of our postal system and recognised around the world.
