Delete This at Your Peril (29 page)

But anyway, he reckons that he has enough for the book and I should stop now for the sake of my mental health. He says he's going to take me up to Doc Ferry's and get the drinks in but I think he's one of those boys that gives it that and then suddenly his pockets are superglued after two rounds.
⁵⁴

I suppose we'll just have to see how we go. Good luck my friend, and if you see any of the rest of them tell them old Bobby Boy passes on his best. Tell them it was just a bit of fun, something to wrap up the nights. Christ only knows, the nights get long.

Sleep tight my friend, keep smiling.

Your Servant,

Bob Servant.

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From: Peter Anderson

To: Bob Servant

Subject: LAST CHANCE

Bob,

Do you want the pots or not? I need an answer now. I will wait for an hour and then you will missed your chance.

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No Reply

 

51
. Image of an extremely dashing gentleman removed for legal reasons.

52
. It should be made clear that this is purely Bob's opinion on the STV weekly show
Scotsport
. Dougie Donnelly is a long-standing employee of the BBC and, as such, is unlikely to be contractually capable of taking up Bob's suggestion. Whether he would wish to do so, however, is another matter entirely.

53
. The
Broughty Ferry Gazette
of 27 March 2002 carried a headline of ‘Limbo Walking Club Treasurer in Embezzlement Outrage' and included a suggestion from a Mr Robert Servant (48) that he had seen Hamish Instrell, the treasurer of the local Limbo Walking Club, drinking cocktails in the West Indies on a television documentary just days after the Club had reported it was in a financial crisis after poor T-shirt sales. The
Broughty Ferry Gazette
of 28 March 2002 carried a full-page apology to the Limbo Walking Club and Mr Instrell that included a report that a Mr Robert Servant (57) had in fact been watching the feature film ‘Cocktail' whilst heavily inebriated and mistook one of the film's actors for Mr Instrell.

54
. For the record, on that particular evening I bought Bob eight drinks, lent him £5 for a kebab and bought two pornographic magazines at his request from the Shell Garage in Broughty Ferry.

Thanks to David Riding and all at MBA, everyone at Birlinn, Jane Stiller, Natasha Martin, to those who generously allowed me to use their images in such absurd ways – Dennis Cox, Tony Northrup, Ansa Bulfone, Marion Boddy-Evans, Tom Nardone, Jane Tonnfeldt, Dundee United, Jayne Cremasco and Joie Leung – and to my family and my pals. And to old men in bars.

And now to Bob. I have been trying for the last week to ascertain if he wished to thank anyone and it's turned into a torturous task, which peaked in intensity yesterday. A regrettable run of events commenced in mid-morning, when Bob called, in fine form I should say, to give me three names: Tommy Peanuts, Chappy Williams and Frank The Plank (otherwise known as Frank Theplank).

‘They're my best mates,' he explained, ‘and they deserve everything they get.'

In the three went, only for Bob to call in the early afternoon from Broughty Ferry, absolutely furious. Chappy Williams had just played a cruel joke on him in Stewpot's Bar, swapping the salt in the shaker on Bob's table for sugar and allowing Bob to apply a typically liberal dose to his scampi and chips.

‘I knew something was wrong straight away,' Bob revealed as he waited patiently at the Gray Street level crossing, ‘but I kept my dignity and ate the whole lot. I was going to try and say something to Chappy about being sweet enough already but I just left it and I'm going home with my head held high. But I want him out right now, Neil, right bloody now.'

I accepted Bob's decision without question and all was quiet until dinnertime, when Bob called again. There was a distinctive echo and he disclosed that he was calling from a toilet cubicle at Doc Ferry's bar.

‘Take Tommy out,' he whispered urgently, ‘he just pulled away my stool as I went to sit down with a couple of birds. I looked like a fucking idiot and I've got a really sore back.'

So we were down to Frank The Plank. But, less than an hour later, Bob was on the phone again. Frank was also to be ejected, he declared, as he had just looked out of the window at Doc Ferry's and spotted Frank wearing Bob's favourite jumper on a passing bus.

‘I said he could have it for a week for his birthday,' Bob told me gravely, ‘but that was nearly a month ago.'

At this point I was under pressure, with the book's text needing to be submitted first thing this morning to the printer's. And so it was with some
consternation that I received a stream of calls from Bob last night. I loyally noted each in turn, and here they are:

8.25 p.m. Bob calls to say that Tommy Peanuts, Chappy Williams and Frank The Plank are all to be immediately reinstated in the book's acknowledgement section after the four gather in Doc Ferry's bar and are ‘getting on great guns'.

8.27 p.m. Bob calls to request Tommy Peanuts be removed from the book's acknowledgement section with immediate effect after Tommy comments twice within a minute that Bob's hair ‘looks like women's hair'.

9.26 p.m. Bob calls to request Chappy Williams be removed from the book's acknowledgement section with immediate effect. Chappy told Bob that a man who entered the bar was his friend Dave and that Bob would like him and should go and say hello. When Bob approached the man and introduced himself he quickly realised that Chappy did not know the man and the man was not called Dave. Chappy had fabricated both facts for his own amusement, and also that of Tommy Peanuts and Frank The Plank.

10.36 p.m. Bob calls to request Frank The Plank be removed from the book's acknowledgement section with immediate effect. Apparently Frank is still wearing Bob's jumper. ‘I knew something was up,' says Bob, ‘because he's had his jacket on all night and has been sweating like something else. I caught him outside with his jacket unzipped and fanning himself with the lunch menu. The guy's a snake.'

11.10 p.m. Bob calls to request Tommy Peanuts, Chappy Williams and Frank The Plank be reinstated in the book's acknowledgement section with immediate effect after the three surprise Bob with the gift of a special chocolate cigar.

11.12 p.m. Bob calls to firmly request that Tommy Peanuts, Chappy Williams and Frank The Plank be removed from the book's acknowledgement section with immediate effect. He is phoning once again from the toilet cubicle and, in the midst of a disconcerting gagging sequence, reveals that the chocolate cigar was just a normal cigar that Tommy had placed in a used Mars Bar wrapper.

It was during this final call that Bob made a startling announcement.

‘They're all bastards, Neil,' he shouted, his voice reverberating sternly amongst the tiling. ‘And I want you to write that.'

‘Are you sure, Bob?' I asked politely. ‘That'll be the end of the book.'

‘Do it,' he said, quieter and with magnificent poise, before the gagging returned and the phone died.

So there you go – that is that, the end.

They're all bastards.

Neil Forsyth, London,
July 2007