by Bob Servant
24
Mum Having to Cough It for Me to Get My Dream House
It took a wee while to properly get over The Gin Crisis. I told Frank not to start any singsongs because they’d become completely wrapped up in my mind with gin, and I stayed out of Stewpots for five long days. After that I pushed on and I’m very proud of the fact that I got over The Gin Crisis by myself. Not that it was rocket science. I’m sure most doctors would say the same to anyone suffering from a Gin Crisis – have a few beers and try to forget about it. Especially if we’re talking about that doctor on the Perth Road that got busted last year.51
The most remarkable thing about The Gin Crisis was that I had some money left at the end of it, which isn’t so much testimony to my budgeting but more that the guy from Carnoustie had been too drunk to ever charge me rent, though what the going rate is for sitting in a tent and drinking gin all day God only knows.
It was also testimony to Frank’s honesty I suppose, though he’d always been intimidated by The Cupboard Of Dreams and worried that he’d be blinded by the riches. Either way, I was still nervous opening The Cupboard of Dreams but when I did there was a very decent pile there and I suggested to Frank that I should probably use the money to get somewhere of my own to live. He was a wee bit funny about it but I pointed out that we were both in our thirties and it must be starting to look a wee bit odd that we still lived together and that could be the reason we hadn’t had much skirt recently. He pointed out that The Gin Crisis probably had something to do with it, along with the fact he’d spent most days looking for me, which made me feel sad because I didn’t realise he’d done that. So as a reward I didn’t give him into trouble for bringing up The Gin Crisis when it was still so raw.
I started looking for somewhere to live and it was a disappointing experience. I suppose I was a bit spoilt living in Frank’s mum’s big house and the only places I could afford on my own were tiny little places that didn’t have room for my clothes or my personality and certainly not both. Then the house next to Frank’s went up for sale and it was an absolute cracker with a big garden and a view right up the river. Frank kept asking why I didn’t buy that house because he thought it was funny that I wasn’t able to buy it even though it was pretty much a direct match to my level of ability.
Things weren’t looking too clever and they jumped off the cliff altogether when Uncle Harry phoned from Australia to say that Mum had died. It was a bit hard to get a full grip on the details because he was calling from overseas and had the TV up quite loud at his end but he said she’d passed away a few weeks before. Even though I hadn’t seen Mum for over twenty years I was shaken up and asked about the funeral plans and he said, ‘Oh I wouldn’t lose any sleep over the funeral, you didn’t miss anything there,’ and how it was ‘really boring’.
That hit me hard and I asked if she’d said anything about me before she died, even it was just a titbit or a throwaway remark. Uncle Harry said definitely not but there was a time a few years before when they’d been driving in the Outback and they’d seen some little kangaroo and Mum had said that it had reminded her of me. I’m not too proud to say hearing that Mum compared me to a beautiful boy kangaroo while on her deathbed made me feel a bit fizzy and I told Uncle Harry I needed to go but he said he was actually calling about something ‘genuinely important’.
He said there’d been a mix-up with the will. They’d never sold the house in Broughty Ferry and Mum’s will said it was to go to me. He said that clearly she’d made a mistake because she liked him a lot more than she liked me and therefore could I sign it over to him?
Hearing that Mum had left me the house as a ‘sorry for not taking you to Australia and by the way you were always my favourite’ gesture was one of the best moments of my life. I told Uncle Harry to fuck off, which was a pretty good moment as well, hung up the phone and headed up to the solicitor Pop Wood who dealt with Mum and Dad’s divorce. He went through her file and confirmed the house was mine and the two of us went to see it. The house was in pretty good nick (later I found out Uncle Harry’s brother had been living there on a sweetcorn52 rent) and I told Pop Wood to stick it on the market without delay.
I didn’t want to move back into the house because my memories of the place were kind of a mixed bag, plus I had a plan. A few weeks later I sold the house and the next day I swooped like a champion prize-winning kestrel and bought the house next to Frank’s. You should have seen his face when I told him. He looked like he’d been kicked in the balls by Eric Bristow.
Moving into the house next to Frank’s was absolutely marvellous. Thirty years later I’m sitting writing these words in that same house while the boy Forsyth wears my clothes and eats all my food.53 These days the house is called Bob’s Palace because of the work I had done with the cheeseburger money but even back when I first moved in it was a cracking gaff.
It’s just a shame that Mum had to cough it for me to get my dream pad. Suddenly I was the last of the Broughty Ferry Servants and in tribute to her and Dad I decided I had to take the Servant name and drag it kicking and screaming into the big time. My opportunity was just about to arrive.
(That’s a cliffhanger.)
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51 See The Dundee Courier, Saturday 28 March 2009 – ‘Perth Road GP Running “Nightclub” in Surgery (“I went in for my bunions,” says Cathy Instrell (56), “he told me to dance them off” . . . “I told him I was suicidal,” says Jack Godden (62), and all he said was, “No frowns in Happy Hour” and then he tried to get me on his shoulders.”)’.
52 Peppercorn, presumably.
53 Nonsense. I’ve never worn any of Bob’s clothes and while staying with him I bought all the groceries in lieu of rent. And, seeing as he’s brought it up, I don’t think he’d find many people willing to meet a grocery list that regularly included household necessities such as book tokens, garden furniture and pornography.
25
The First Day of the Cheeseburger Wars
People sometimes ask me when the Cheeseburger Wars started and I always say the same thing. ‘Slow down, wait, take it easy and just fucking hold on a minute,’ because there’s something that needs to be understood before we even start talking Cheeseburger Wars. First, you have to know something about this city we call Dundee.
Dundee is a fish-and-chips city. Always has been, always will be. Yes, we’ve had the odd fad. Bengali Bertie’s back in the sixties, Right Down To Chinatown up in the High Street these days,54 and I’ll hold my hands up and say I’ve had a few pizzas in my time. But overall it’s fish this and chips that and that’s what the people want. It’s been like that for hundreds of years and yet, for eight years in the 1980s something peculiar happened in Dundee and Yours Truly was right there in the middle of the action.
I’d heard whispers about a couple of vans that were floating about the city centre selling American food, so Frank and I jumped on a bus to see what the fuss was about. We found one of the vans down in Dock Street and, my God, what a sight! ‘Look at all these people, Bob,’ said Frank, and it was a fair point. If the crowd was impressive that was nothing compared to what waited for us when we got nearer the van and saw they were selling cheeseburgers.
Looking back it seems a bit daft that we were so impressed by a van selling cheeseburgers, but you have to understand this was a different time. We’d only ever seen cheeseburgers in American movies and the idea that something from the American movies would wind up in Dundee was just ridiculous. It’s not like King Kong had done his Look At Me stuff on top of the Law Hill or Godzilla had emerged from the River Tay and said, ‘Hello Boys,’ so why would Frank and I expect to see a van handing out American cheeseburgers in Dock Street at two o’clock in the afternoon?
I’m not a God man, just ask Father O’Neill, but being in the middle of that crowd in front of the cheeseburger van felt a bit like some Big Shot in the sky was reaching down and tapping me on the head and saying ‘Pay Attention’. Frank pointed at one of the che
eseburgers and said, ‘I’ll have one of what he’s having,’ and I pointed at the van and said, ‘No, Frank, we’ll have one of what he’s having.’ It was a decent line. It didn’t make perfect sense but the message was there.
Frank and I got the bus back to the Ferry and I cracked open the classifieds. There it was. An old ice cream van up in Douglas, £200 the lot. I was so excited I sprung for a taxi for me and Frank, and half an hour later, in the garden of a house in Douglas, I saw my Everest. It was rusty, dented and needed a paint job. If it was a woman it would have been put down, but for me I just saw bags upon bags of raw potential.
‘My eyes have seen the glory, Francis,’ I said and he asked me if I was back on the gin. I said that was both hurtful and wrong and he should pay attention because this was a Eureka moment just like when the apple fell on the boy’s head and Stephen Hawking built the first-ever computer.
The guy who owned the van said if we’d finished talking bollocks would I like to take it or not. I gave him a smile that said Oh If You Only Knew and handed over the £200. That, right there, was the beginning of what is known today as The Cheeseburger Wars.55
Bob and Francis at the van56
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54 See The Dundee Courier, 26 June 2008 – ‘Mao’s About That Then? (“I felt like I was on the Orient Express,” said Dorothy Chambers. 92.)’.
55 See Dundee 1982–89, A Time Of Change, A Time of Rebellion (Edinburgh University Press, 2003) by Professor James Walker. (‘What began as a welcome spread of provincial entrepreneurship would in turn feed a mania comparable to the European witch craze of the 1600s. Like then, a people would be first radicalised and then seemingly possessed. Local governance would be engulfed and compromised, societal rules and normality would be abandoned, and victory would belong to the corrupting and the corrupted. For Dundee, a small northern European city, this meant enduring a collective insanity for eight long years while the rest of Britain studiously ignored the city’s plight. Pop concerts would be held for Africa, a war would be fought for faraway islands and yet in our midst a city was being strangled by hubris and the unquenchable thirst of the new. Who wept for Dundee? Only Dundee and that is the tragedy.’)
56 Photo courtesy of Bob Servant’s private collection, all rights reserved. Inscription on back of photograph reads: ‘Talking Francis through the menu and settling his first day nerves, 1982.’
26
People Talking About the Wild West But Forgetting About the Quicksand
Sometimes in life success creeps up on you. Sometimes you wake up in the morning and it’s sitting naked in a chair watching you and saying, ‘Nice sleep?’ That’s what happened with me and The Cheeseburger Wars.
Things moved fast from the start. I told Frank to get the van ready while I went and struck up relationships with butchers, bakers and the notoriously hard-to-please vegetable mob that were based on fair prices and mutual respect. At night Frank and I would watch American movies with Frank’s finger poised like a Harrier jet over the pause button on the Betamax. When a cheeseburger came on the screen I’d shout, ‘Pause the Betamax!’ Frank would slam his finger down and we’d both go and sit right in front of the telly and let the image of the cheeseburger burn into our minds. Frank complained that when he closed his eyes at night all he saw was cheeseburgers and I told him that was exactly what I wanted to hear.
I’ll never forget the first day we took the van out. The van ran on petrol, the fryer ran on gas and Frank and I ran on pure adrenaline. Who wouldn’t when they were operating a cheeseburger van without a licence? The cheeseburger scene had caught the council on the hop and they were still trying to work out the licensing situation but Frank and I just couldn’t wait any longer. Not when there was a killing to be made.
I’m often said to be the first cheeseburger van operator in Dundee. As I’ve already told you, that’s not true. I was the best, there’s no doubt about that, but I reckon we were probably the fifth cheeseburger van in Dundee. That’s the fifth van on the road when there were already around 10,000 confirmed cheeseburger fans in the city. It was like shooting lions in a barrel and that’s exactly what we did.
It seems strange considering what was to come but in those early days there was a great atmosphere between the cheeseburger pioneers, a real community spirit. We were similar to fishermen meeting up on the High Seas to tell each other where the best catches were and give each other tattoos.
Once you knew where that day’s cheeseburger hotspots were you’d go down there, turn on the fryer and within ten minutes it was like the last bus out of Saigon. I was earning a fortune and as soon as I had enough in The Cupboard Of Dreams I started expanding. Every time an ice-cream van popped up in the classifieds I’d swoop like a peregrine falcon and snap it up.
Luckily for me (but not for them) the luxury goods shop that the Monifieth boys had opened had gone bust because of the arrival of the Argos catalogue, so they were quick to jump on board. I set them up with a couple of vans and handed them a map of Dundee. They asked where they should go and I said that they should be like dentists – keep the equipment clean, wash their hands and look for open mouths. There were no rules, you see, and that was how we wanted it. The city hadn’t been carved up like with the window-cleaning and we could just set out in the van and see where fate took us.
One day I was answering Frank’s questions about the situation and I said that it was like the Wild West. A few days later we were at the Claypotts roundabout when one of the other van owners pulled up. They started chatting to Frank and talking about how busy they’d been and Frank said that it was like the Wild West.
Traditionally I pull Frank up if he uses one of my jokes because he instantly cheapens the material by doing so but in this case I let it go. Within days I’d heard half a dozen van owners trotting out the Wild West line and smiling like they were Les Dawson. One of the Monifieth boys even used it to me and to my great credit I let that go as well.
The problem wasn’t that my joke of Dundee being like the Wild West had been stolen and used without the slightest nod in my direction. The problem was that it really was like the Wild West in Dundee back then and everyone seemed to have forgotten what the Wild West was like. I’ve been a cowboy nut right from my Lone Ranger days and I probably know more about the Wild West than anyone in Dundee.
Yes, there were saloons and singsongs and card games and flinging women across your saddle and all the rest. But there were also shootouts, ambushes, lynching and quicksand. And that’s what people seemed to forget. They thought the Wild West was a bed of roses. I saw all the different cheeseburger van owners laughing about the Wild West at traffic lights and I used to shake my head and think ‘What about the quicksand?’ Once again, I was to be proved right.
27
The Failure of the Bank of Scotland’s Executive Winners Club
Two years into the Cheeseburger Wars I’d made more money than I’d ever seen. How much? Don’t be tacky, but let me say this. There wasn’t a gameshow on the telly where the top prize was higher than what was in The Cupboard of Dreams. I used to watch those gameshows and they’d win the top prize and give it the Just Can’t Believe it and Wildest Dreams stuff and, although I’d be more than happy for them, it was hard for me not to shake my head, waggle my finger, cross my legs and think ‘small time’.
I could have hosted my own gameshow in the house with The Cupboard of Dreams as the star prize although, to be fair, I’d only have done it if the television channel who broadcasted the show would replace the money in The Cupboard of Dreams if the contestant won. Otherwise there would have been no financial benefit in me hosting the show plus I would have had to put up with a lot of strangers in my house and chances are that at least a few of them would be fannies.
Anyway, my point is that I was rolling in cash and wondering what to do with it when I found myself wandering down Humperdinck Avenue57 past the Bank of Scotland. In the window was a poster saying, ‘Ask Today About Our Executiv
e Club’. Worth a couple of minutes, I thought to myself, and went and asked for the manager in that ultra-confident way that I handle myself in banks and at christenings.
Sometimes when you meet someone you can tell straight away that they’re going to need a hand. Some people call it bullying but that’s not true. It’s about giving people a hand by helping them and making them do things that you tell them because it’s for their own good. The manager at the Bank of Scotland was one of that mob. He was a weedy wee guy, very nervy and he could barely get his words out.
He told me that the Executive Club was a new type of bank account where you got a leather cover for your account book and a fountain pen. I told the manager that wasn’t a bad start but if he wanted to impress the local business community he was going to have to come up with a bit more. He asked what I suggested and I told him to meet me at the bank the next morning an hour before opening. He said that sounded like a security risk and I said the only risk to his security would be if he didn’t turn up and gave him a look that could bend steel.
That night was Wogan’s 47th birthday and we celebrated it in style but even then I rolled up early the next morning and was pleased to find the manager waiting for me. He opened up and I had a good look at the bank’s reception. To the side of the counters was a door. I asked the manager what it was and he said, ‘Stationery.’ Now, I said, ask me what’s in there. ‘What’s in there?’ he asked. ‘Opportunity,’ I told him.
I told the manager that I was a major local business success story and if he gave me permission I could get a hundred local Big Business Wigs signed up the Executive Club. He started on about bank procedure and I took off my jacket. I’d worn one of Frank’s nephew’s t-shirts so it was tight over my muscles. With the fingers of my left hand I did the Slow Caterpillar routine up my right bicep and looked him in the eye and whispered, ‘Do you eat meat?’ He folded like a pack of cards and said I could have that day as a trial run.
