Bob Servant (9 page)

Then there was the bathroom. Frank would hear me having a bath and nip into his half of the bathroom and get on the job. To this day I don't know how he did this, and I don't have any great wish to learn,
but Frank seemed to be able to produce the most appalling results through there almost at will. I'd nearly pass out in the bath which could have been lethal (and hopefully brought a murder charge for him) and in the end had to have secret baths in the middle of the night which weren't as much fun as they sound.

In the end though Daphne became such a nightmare that Frank was irrelevant. I don't know what happened to her, it was the strangest thing. At first everything was all nice and relaxed and we just sort of mucked about but then she started behaving really oddly. She had this thing she would do when she'd insist I join in with stuff she did. If she went for a walk along the beach at sunset, or to the cinema on a Friday night, or to a restaurant on her birthday, then she'd really forcibly insist that I went with her. I presumed she'd read some scare stories about local crime rates and told her that she'd be safe enough doing these things by herself but she completely missed my point and started with the shouting and bawling.

That kind of behaviour started to creep into the house as well. If I was sitting in the lounge having a wee think then she'd come and sit beside me. Then I'd go outside and sit on the bench and have a wee think and she'd come and sit beside me. So I'd go into the kitchen and have a cup of tea and Lo And Behold she'd pop up there as well and, oh what a surprise, she'd like a cup of tea as well! I presumed that someone, probably Frank, had told her that the house was haunted so I sat her down and said that she didn't always have to be in the same part of the house as me because there weren't any ghosts. Again, I thought I was helping her out but the result was another Hiroshima of an argument.

After that, things got worse.

If hiding had been an Olympic sport in 1969 then I'd have been part of the Hiding Team for the 1972 Munich Olympics or the Hitler Olympics as they were commonly called.
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In fact I'd almost definitely have been the captain and you tell me if an Olympic team captain would not automatically become a local Hero. You just have a think and tell me that. Not that you should need to have a think about it because the answer is yes with a capital Y.

I suppose I always knew I had a bit of a talent for hiding, you always do know these things I think, but it was Daphne that drove me into developing that ability into top, international-class performances. At first the hiding was pretty standard stuff. I'd tuck in behind doors, ‘accidentally' lock myself out the house, take a ‘long time' tying my laces and so on. Then I stepped things up a gear – under the bed, in the airing cupboard beneath a pile of towels, in a ball behind the couch. These moves (which I don't for one minute claim to have invented) would usually buy me a few hours but then it would be sudden capture and the Earache.

In the end I was coming up with some unbelievable stuff that took a fair bit of planning but the results speak for themselves. I hollowed out the inside of Frank's mum's grandfather clock and holed up in there for an entire Sunday. It must have been gone midnight when my tummy rumbled and she nabbed me. I told her I was checking the time but, oh no, it was all ‘inconsiderate' this and ‘lunatic' that.

The final straw was probably the best hiding plan that I or anyone else from the Dundee area has ever come up with. Frank cocked it up for me, if I needed to tell you that. Up to this point he'd been pretty useful with the hiding which of course he supported because it annoyed Daphne who he had unfairly taken to calling Daftie. If I needed him to help then he was allowed to come round to my half of the house, help out and then slip away before Daftie, sorry Daphne, caught him.

This particular plan was a cracker. There was an old armchair in the back room that no-one used so I took the cover off, brought it through to the lounge and got Frank to put it on top me. We worked out a way I could sit so that it looked like a normal chair but I was also facing the TV that I could see through peepholes and had a bit of a space on my lap for provisions. I made a big bag of sandwiches, got a bottle of whisky and got back into the chair. It was absolutely perfect and if it wasn't for Frank I'd have spent days pretending to be a chair with Daphne none the wiser.

Daphne was having a bath when we got set up and once I was in the chair I told Frank to go back to his side of the house. Now, I can't remember exactly what words I used but I can tell you what I didn't say. I didn't say ‘improvise' which is what Frank maintains to this day I said. The idea that under any circumstances whatsoever I would ever tell Frank to improvise is laughable. The idea that I would tell him to improvise while I was disguised as a chair is the stuff of nightmares.

Frank went outside, waited five minutes while he ‘got into character' and rang the bell. Daphne came downstairs and opened the door and Frank said that he'd forgotten his key and walked through to the living room. He pointed at the chair I was hidden inside and said, ‘That's a lovely chair, Daphne.' She said, ‘So it is, where's that come from?' Frank said, ‘I don't know but it's a lovely chair and that's all it is it's just a lovely chair, there's nothing more to it than that.' Daphne said, ‘Well why don't you sit on it if you like it so much?' and Frank said (I kid you fucking not), ‘I can't sit on it because Bob's inside it.' There was this horrible silence and then I took a deep breath, threw off the chair cover, held up the sandwiches and the whisky and shouted, ‘It's party time and I'm the Chairman!'

Bearing in mind I had about five seconds to prepare I think I did remarkably well to come up with ‘It's party time and I'm the
Chairman' but for Daphne it was not only not a good line it was also enough for her to pack her bags, say something about me and Frank's state of minds that was completely out of order in my case, and leave the house forever.

It was a shame for her sake that Daphne was such a tough person to live with because I'd be surprised if she ever got someone that could put up with her. But more to the point I'd become one of the best hiders around and it was just my luck that this one of the few sports that the Olympics has never recognised. It's unbelievable – you get the people doing the funny walk and the bow and arrow and all that but when it comes to hiding it's a complete no-no.

Still, at least it wrapped things up with Daphne. Relationships never end well and I'm glad the two of us broke up in a way that we'd probably have both laughed at later, if we'd ever seen each other again. Frank and I decided to go out to celebrate and luckily we had a reason to do so. It was Terry Wogan's 32nd birthday. We'd both got heavily into Wogan by that point and Stewpot let us have one photo of him up in the pub which was a nice gesture and added a happy ending to what had been a tricky few months.

Wogan's 32nd Birthday
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Bob's way off here. The Games commonly known as the Hitler Olympics were the Berlin Olympics of 1936. For Germany to have entitled the 1972 Munich Olympics as the Hitler Olympics would have been needlessly provocative.

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Photo courtesy of Bob Servant's private collection, all rights reserved. Inscription on back of photograph reads: ‘Wogan's 32nd Birthday, 3 August 1970. I lent Frank £2.'

I've made some great decisions in my life, really top class. I've never worn a cardigan, I've never had a moustache and I got my double entendre phase out the way in the 1980s before every man and his dog started using them under John Major.
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Entering the window-cleaning game was another very good decision. Making Frank my number two wasn't.

The window-cleaning game is a hard business full of tough nuts but everyone knew it was a licence to print free money. By 1970 Frank and I were sick of doing jobs here and there and having to cut down on luxuries to make sure we had the readies to spend in Stewpot's every day. We were looking for something bigger and better, and one day in the summer of 1970 we found it when Stewpot leant over the bar, something he's always excelled at, and asked if we'd heard about Safehands Riley.

Safehands Riley wasn't the biggest name in window cleaning – that was Buckets Bennett from Invergowrie – but he was an established figure and had a respectable little round which covered off West Ferry from Victoria Road to Dawson Park. I was on nodding terms with him and Frank knew him on a ‘Hello' basis, and he had a reputation for being a decent man and not thinking he was Cliff Richard like a lot of the window-cleaning big guns.

What Stewpot told us was remarkable. Safehands Riley had been attacked by a German Shepherd at a house in Strathearn Road and had completely lost his confidence to go to houses with enclosed gardens. West Ferry is full of big gaffs so that had pretty much taken Safehands out the game and now he was looking to offload his round and get into something that, as he put it, ‘would let him see his grandchildren grow up'.

I found that surprising, particularly because Safehands didn't have any kids, but I also saw it as an opportunity so I said, ‘Action time, Francis,' and me and Frank headed up to Safehands' house in Ellieslea Road. There was no answer at the door but we heard him shouting and went round the front. He was hiding out in an upstairs bedroom and in a terrible state, unshaven and speaking to us through a gap in the curtains.

He said that the whole thing had been a nightmare and all he remembered was a big set of teeth, a lot of barking and feeling trapped. Sharp as a tack I said, ‘That sounds like when I had a girlfriend,' which eased the mood and Safehands said it was the first time he'd laughed since he got out the hospital because all he'd been doing was sleeping, taking medicine and trying not to think about German Shepherds. ‘Sounds like when I had a girlfriend,' said Frank and I told him to go and wait in the street.

Safehands and I got down to business. He said he'd give me his list of clients, a ladder, a bucket and more sponges than I'd ever need for £500. For the next half an hour I played every trick in the book. First I told him to say the price again in exactly thirty seconds, ran over to his outside tap, filled my mouth with water and then spat it out in surprise when he said the price. Then I did the ‘get really angry and ask why they're treating you like this' move. Then I did the ‘I'm walking away, I'm walking away' and walk really slowly until they call you back. Then I did the Woe Is Me and pretend to cry one-two. By the end Safehands was on the ropes and wrapped up in my web of tricks. We met at £496 as long as I paid cash.

I had a week to get the money and I came up with the fairest way of raising it. Frank kicked up a bit of a fuss, as I knew he would, even though I pointed out that selling off most of the house's furniture would instantly double the size of the rooms and to double the size of the rooms in any other way would cost a fortune.

He was particularly difficult about his mum's antique piano but,
like I told him, neither of us could play a note and his mum would have to have pretty long arms to bang out a tune seeing as she now lived in the Goodbye And All The Very Best Nursing Home in Stobswell. I opened the windows and said, ‘Shall we see if she can reach the piano, Frank?' and did the cupping the ear thing and finally he crumbled and admitted I was right. He looked a bit down, so I cheered him up by telling him I had two big surprises for him later that day, which was a bit daft because I didn't have any surprises for him at all and he'd almost definitely have settled for one.

But you don't get to where I am in life without being quick on your feet, so once the furniture cowboys had come and picked up the gear and given me my £500 I told Frank to get his jacket on and took him down to Vissochi's Ices on the harbour. ‘Are we going to Vissochi's, Bob, are we going to Vissochi's?' he kept asking and he nearly exploded when we arrived and I ordered him a treble scooper which he's not really supposed to have because of his excitement problem.

We went and sat on a bench and looked out over the harbour. I was having a great think, mostly about the window-cleaning round and how much money I would make, and then Frank interrupted it by asking me what his second surprise was. It must have been the view or the fresh air but I took a deep breath and said that he was going to be my number two on the window-cleaning round.

He didn't say anything so I turned round and I don't think I'd ever seen him so happy. He had this big smile. He looked a bit like he was going to cry, and he had ice cream all over his face. I looked at Frank, sitting there at the harbour while the sun set and the swans quacked away, and I thought to myself – ‘Oh sweet Jesus what have I done?'