Why Me? (28 page)

65
See
The Dundee Evening Telegraph
, 29 August 2010: ‘“Humbled” Schofield wins Rear of The Year again'.

66
Removed on legal advice. See
The Dundee Courier
, 14 May 1983:
‘Pet Shop Burnt To The Ground'
.

From: Bob Servant

To: Rose

Subject: ‘Why Me?'

Rose,

Hope all's well at your end. I've spoken to you a couple of times before about my book. Well, Rose, we've reached the end. The old horse has had one last run round the paddock and now we're all on the bus to the glue factory. What I'm saying to you, Rose, is that the publishers are on my back like monkeys and the printer is sitting with his finger on the big button. I'm under the most awful pressure, Rose. I feel like Agatha Christie at a pub quiz.

I'd love to put our emails in the book, Rose. I think they'd really bring something to the party and also I'd like to use your light-hearted ‘Why Me?' gag as the title. What do you think? Come on, Rose, get involved. You owe it to yourself.

Bob

----------------

From: Rose

To: Bob Servant

Subject: RE: ‘Why Me?'

NO

----------------

From: Bob Servant

To: Rose

Subject: re: ‘Why Me?'

Rose,

That's fine. I have too much respect for you to ask again.

Your Servant,

Bob Servant

----------------

NO REPLY

Thanks to – Hugh Andrew, Andrew Simmons and all at Birlinn, David Riding and all at MBA and Michael Munro for their roles in this book. A big ‘Dundee hello' to Mum, Dad, Alan and Carol. And greetings, with just the right amount of respect, to my pals from Dundee and beyond. Have a drink on me.
⁶⁷
Finally, thanks from myself and Bob to the brave, honest people of Broughty Ferry (may your heads remain high). And now, I suppose, to Bob.

I found him sitting in Broughty Ferry's celebrated Stewpot's bar, engrossed in the letters page of the
Dundee Evening Telegraph
. Bob placed the newspaper down, tapped his finger on the letters page and said with a wink that it was ‘a good argument for laboratories'. Over the following, uncomfortable half an hour, which included an emotional ten minute conversation where I coaxed Bob back out of a toilet cubicle, it emerged that he had intended to say ‘lobotomies'.

From this unpromising start the conversation mended itself by me allowing Bob full reign. He opined at length on the government cutbacks which he seemed to believe had directly caused television advertising breaks to ‘double' in length. ‘If that's not irony what is?' he asked while I desperately searched for an answer that wouldn't have me back talking to a toilet door.

Bob reserved vitriol for the phone hacking scandal, calling the offending journalists alternatively ‘maggots' and ‘magpies'. He confessed that he had a personal sense of outrage having been ‘targeted' by the
Dundee Courier
. His evidence was shaky at best – he had ‘heard someone on his roof a couple of times' and ‘a strange Volvo' had started to park on his road. Slightly more sinister was his story of hearing heavy breathing during a recent phone call, though I tactfully identified that Bob had been cutting his grass at the time and had been forced to run for the phone ‘like Alan Wells'.
⁶⁸

Bob suggested a walk. He led me to Broughty Ferry's harbour where I brought up the Acknowledgements section in which you currently wallow.

Bob was mercilessly swift in providing the sole individual he wanted to thank in print.

‘Andre Agassi,' shrugged Bob, ‘for showing me that it could be done.' He delivered the line with enough certainty to silence my many questions.

The harbour at Broughty Ferry offers a sweeping view of the surroundings and I asked Bob about his unbreakable attachment with the area.

‘This used to be my playground,' he said simply.

It was a whimsical, near poetic touch from Bob that I enjoyed until noticing that Bob was pointing at a children's playground over the road. I asked if he had ever considered leaving the area.

‘When you have a nice hat,' said Bob, ‘you only take it off to sleep.'

This was followed by an epic tale of a promotion in the
Dundee Courier
in the late 1980s. Bob gravely recalled collecting thirteen daily tokens in a row for a coach trip to the Lake District. Tragically, on the 14th andfi nal day of the promotion Bob did not buy a copy of the newspaper (‘Frank's fault, let's leave it at that') and therefore missed out on the coach trip.

‘Little twists, eh?' said Bob in conclusion.

He acted out a twisting action that clumsily mutated into the mimed opening of a wine bottle, followed by the mimed pouring and drinking of a glass of wine. Concerned that Bob was planning to drink the whole virtual bottle, I suggested that I walk him home. When we passed Frank's house Bob coughed a couple of times and said that I ‘might as well' add in the Acknowledgements that Frank is ‘all right'.

Bob and Frank, I should reiterate, have known each other for over fifty years and the erosion that must have caused to Frank's mental health is inconceivable. After only two months in the company of Bob and his emails I had sensed my grip on reality loosening by the day.
⁶⁹

Frank was, I suggested, Bob's most trusted friend.

‘If he was a dog he'd have been put down,' answered Bob, ‘and there have been lots of times that I'd have driven him to the vets. But, put it this way, I wouldn't have watched them do it and I wouldn't have bought another dog.'

I observed that Frank's great strength is surely his loyalty and Bob nodded in agreement.

‘He's my Ginger Roger,' he said.

‘Ginger Rogers,' I corrected.

‘No, Ginger Roger,' confirmed Bob, before clarifying that he referred to a red-haired man from Lochee who is locally accepted in Dundee as being especially loyal.

We arrived at the gate to Bob's personable house. A building bought and crudely extended with the proceeds of thousands, if not millions, of cheeseburgers. I asked, with some trepidation, of Bob's future plans, aware that I seem to be inextricably part of whatever they may be. I hinted at his thinning years and he replied with a fable involving a jam jar. There was something about the amount of jam being left in a jar, coupled with the quality of the jam and then, most cryptically of all, the tightness of the jar's lid.

‘Let me tell you something,' said Bob. ‘Dean Martin used to sleep with a ham sandwich beside his bed made out of the best ham in town. He never ate it because he didn't like ham. Someone asked him once why he slept next to a ham sandwich when he didn't like ham and you know what he said? He said, “Because I can.” Do you see,' asked Bob, ‘what I mean?'

‘Yes,' I lied.

Bob shook my hand and walked grandly up his path. He paused, spun round and shouted, ‘Which one was “Blue Eyes”, “Old Blue Eyes”?'

‘Frank Sinatra,' I called back.

‘That's who I meant,' Bob shouted urgently. ‘It was Frank Sinatra with the ham sandwich. Change it to that and stick it in the book.'

So that's it, my last note as editor. It was Frank Sinatra with the ham sandwich.

67
Get a receipt, single house spirits and basic lager only. One per applicant.

68
Wells, Alan (1952–). Popular Scottish sprinter who defied the odds to win gold at the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games. See
The Dundee Courier
, 26 July 1980:
‘Brave Scot Ends Communism'
.

69
On that note may I take this late opportunity to clarify that, as far as I am aware, Sir Trevor McDonald has never committed murder. Furthermore, former BBC newsreaders Nicholas Witchell and Moira Stewart have never assisted McDonald in the disposal of a corpse. However, with regard to the suggestion that former
Crimewatch
presenter Nick Owen buried the body of a homeless man at sea please refer to page 164 of
Don't Have Nightmares, Do Sleep Well – The Nick Owen Story
(Foreword by Sir Trevor McDonald).

Neil Forsyth

Anti-hero of spam Bob Servant takers on internet fraudsters at their own game in this hilarious compendium of genuine email exchanges. As they entice him with lost African millions, Russian brides and get-rich-quick scams, Bob responds by generously offering some outlandish schemes of his own. The spammers may have breached his firewall, but they have met their match as the former window cleaner and cheeseburger magnate rises heroically to the challenge and sows confusion in his wake.

‘A very, very funny book'

Irvine Welsh

‘A living, breathing creation of comic genius'

Bookbag

‘Genius! Highly entertaining and brilliantly deranged'

Maxim

‘Reminds me how good comic writing can be'

Scotland on Sunday

Neil Forsyth

Cyber hero Bob Servant became a cult classic in the bestselling
Delete This at Your Peril
. This much-anticipated sequel tells the life story of one of Scotland's unsung heroes. From his days in the Merchant Navy, to his creation of a record-breaking window-cleaning round and his time as a cheeseburger magnate, Bob Servant has lived life to its fullest. With touching bravery he takes the reader on a fearless romp through the hilarious, whimsical and impassioned memories that surely make him the undisputed Hero of Dundee.

‘Hilarious. Full of sly Scottish humour' Martin Kelner

‘There's stuff here that Chic Murray would have been proud of' Sanjeev Kohli

‘Crackingly funny . . . There's a laugh on every page'

The Herald