I did interview one for a magazine in the 1990s, Ian Little, who was running his own personal bus museum - and bus route - in Foxton.
He was back re-visiting Dunedin, where he grew up.
Ian was certifiably passionate about buses.
Our interview began with him sitting respectfully in a chair, but gradually he advanced on the little cassette recorder on the table between us, until, clearly confident it would not fight back, he attacked it, mouth inches from the microphone, with excited rant and bellow.
It would have been the perfect shot for the feature.
Ian's love affair with buses began when he was a child, his head poking around the gate waiting for the Lookout Point trolley bus, Route 43, to come up the hill.
Many years later when he began stocking his Foxton bus museum, he had Route 43 transported up there.
And he happily drove it on a route he designed himself.
Ian died two years ago, and I was not at all surprised when I heard his casket was carried to the cemetery in that same bus.
I was never a bus person, but a burgeoning fascination with them has developed over the past few months as I have scorned a lifelong habit of walking and begun hopping on them almost indiscriminately.
Even on warm days.
I had barely used a bus in Dunedin since the late 1960s, and my first time back was frightening.
How much did a bus cost? Did you have to have the correct change? And because my eyes had deteriorated so badly that I could not read the sign on the front, I would have to ask the driver where he was going.
Bus drivers are historically grumpy, I was prepared for an Aberfanian slagheap of vitriol and scorn.
But I was quickly sorted.
I bought a bus timetable and a Go card, and studied the timetable closely, memorising key departure times from the bottom of my street.
I was impressed at the lengthy contorted composite routes they now run, some of which I resolved to recommend to tourists ahead of the albatrosses.
Ironically last Wednesday, Go bus sent out new different bus timetables.
I am going to have to relearn everything.
Ten days ago, a balmy Saturday afternoon, 20deg, exquisite day for a walk, I chose to ride along Princes St in a bus.
The driver had music playing, quite loudly.
Either Enya's It's In The Rain, or Evanescence's Listen To The Rain - without a music shop any more, I have become as musically dispossessed as Ellen Degeneres.
But it was nice.
I like music when I travel.
Perhaps on Friday night in the city's more hellfiery suburbs, drivers play Search And Destroy by Iggy & The Stooges.
I also had swirling music coming into town last Wednesday morning, a weird free-form occasionally melodic jazz somewhere between Ornette Coleman and George Zamfir.
But it was not the driver, it was a guy sitting behind me noodling on a thin pipe.
Dunedin buses are attractive now.
Uniform.
There was a time not so long ago when we were cursed by a fleet which looked as though it had been bought at a Turners damaged vehicle auction in Delhi.
Sadly, very few have cords to pull.
I love pulling cords.
But the red buttons on poles are fine.
The bus drivers are not grumpy, Dunedin people often shout out thanks when they get off, rare in other cities, and I have briefly met some delightful, albeit occasionally surrealistic people.
I doubt if I will ever start a bus museum, but they have one for sale at the Citibus depot very close to where we live, Bus 190.
It has a cord.
The 4-year-old grandson from Chicago is coming here for Christmas.
I am forming a phenomenal plan.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
