by Bob Servant
The first thing I did was rename the Executive Club as The Executive Winners Club to make it punchier. The manager went off to change the forms and I found a marker pen and wrote ‘The Winner’s Enclosure’ above the stationery cupboard door. He grumbled a bit about that but the bank was opening so he gave me the forms and left me to it.
Straight away I started working the crowd and showing them the forms and asking them if they’d like to come into The Winners Enclosure. It was tough going. The most common reasons people gave for not joining me in The Winners Enclosure were that they were happy enough with the bank account they had, or they didn’t like how small my t-shirt was or that they knew for a fact that The Winners Enclosure was the bank’s stationery cupboard. When you’re faced with narrow minds like that a lot of people would have given up but I kept going and finally I got a few people to at least join me in The Winners Enclosure for a chat.
Unfortunately there were a couple of problems with The Winners Enclosure that the manager had failed to tell me. It was too small to have seats in it so the customer and I had to stand quite close to each other. And there wasn’t a light. Because I was having confidential discussions I obviously had to close the door and some of the customers just didn’t have the confidence in themselves to handle the overall situation.
What with all the screaming the manager started to really let himself down, saying how my trial was over and I had to go. Needless to say he was too scared to come out from behind the glass so I hit back by trying to steal the pens but they were on chains and I ended up having a glorified tug-of-war with the pen holders which wasn’t how I wanted things to end but it was the manager’s fault that it did so. Either way, I got one of the pens off eventually, held it up and snapped it in two to show him it was a Metaphor, and then walked out the bank with my head held high.
Looking back, it’s a shame that the manager fucked up the Executive Winners Club. I’d like it to have succeeded not for the glory, although that would have come in spades, but for the fact that it would probably have been good for me to have had a bank account.
You see the thing about my money is that I’ve never really paid any Kriss Akabusi. I’ve always meant to pay Kriss Akabusi, I mean it’s not like I don’t use the streetlights and I suppose the Army keeps me as safe as anyone else, but I never paid any Kriss Akabusi on the window-cleaning money so I just never bothered paying any Kriss Akabusi on the cheeseburger money either. But the way I see it is that, yes, maybe I’ve not paid as much Kriss Akabusi over the years as I could have done, but I’ve also given a lot of other people jobs. I’m sure some of them will have paid at least a little bit of Kriss Akabusi so that’s something I can throw back at the Kriss Akabusi boo boys.58
Wogan’s 47th Birthday59
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57 See The Dundee Courier, 3 August 1972 – ‘Singer “Surprised and Honoured” By City Gesture’.
58 You may notice this last paragraph reads a little strangely. I have substituted the name of the British athlete Kriss Akabusi for a word that, if left unaltered in the copy, could have seen Bob prosecuted by the relevant national authority.
59 Photo courtesy of Bob Servant’s private collection, all rights reserved. Inscription on back of photograph reads: ‘Wogan’s 47th Birthday, 3 August 1985. I lent Frank £5.’
28
The Cheeseburger Civil War
The Cheeseburger Wars came in two parts. There was The Cheeseburger Civil War and The Cheeseburger World War, but the important thing to remember about both is that there wasn’t any fighting. Not a single punch, not one karate chop. They weren’t like the wars you get in books or in the Top Ten Wars lists that it’s fashionable to talk about at parties. The Cheeseburger Wars were fought using words. Words became bullets and people’s mouths became guns.
The Cheeseburger Civil War was a war of rumours and it all started, surprise surprise, because of money. By 1986 Dundee had finally reached its limit for cheeseburger vans. Every man and his dog had entered the trade and suddenly things got very tense. The relationship between van owners became like a failing marriage. You don’t trust them, you stop talking to them and you start to stockpile mince reserves. If we saw another van at the traffic lights we’d look straight ahead, if we bumped into one at the garage we’d pretend to read the paper and if we overtook one on the Kingsway dual carriageway we’d close our eyes until we were past which was dangerous but saved embarrassment.
What I call The Great Silence only lived for a few months before it was drowned by The Rumours. No-one knows where and when The Rumours started but the first time I was aware of them was one day when Frank and I had parked up at Baxter Park next to the Rock Hudson statue60 and a friend of Frank’s came over and asked if we had anything other than monkey meat. Frank said he wasn’t sure (because he’s a tool) and I asked the guy what he was talking about.
He said he’d heard a rumour we only sold monkey burgers. Frank’s pals are often soft in the head, he meets most of them at adult swimming lessons, so I didn’t take much notice until later that day when a woman in Commercial Street called me the ‘Pol Pot of the monkey world’ and a couple of kids in Kolacz Crescent asked if we were ‘the Tarzan van’.
From there The Rumours were just ridiculous. There was the one about our Limeade being stolen from a children’s home, that stuff about us being diehard Idi Amin fans (I’d followed the guy’s career but I’d never been an out-and-out fan) and then all the nonsense about me having a false neck. I never understood how having a false neck would affect the quality of my cheeseburgers but you can’t debate with these people. And anyway I didn’t have a false neck. And I still don’t.61
I knew The Rumours were coming from the other van owners but it was impossible to track down the culprits. I had to act and I did what any self-respecting local businessman does when he finds himself in a sticky spot. I bribed councillors.
Dundee City Council had finally set up a Cheeseburger Van Licensing Committee in an attempt to get some control over the situation and I found out the names of the three councillors that sat on it. They were Tuck Cummings, Gripper Wright, and Swapper Coley and as soon as I had their names I went to work.
The thing about corruption is you have to get inside the mind of the person you’re corrupting and then pull his or her levers as if they’re a forklift. The first forklift I had in my sights was Tuck Cummings and I was in a strong position because he was a notorious cheeseburger fan. At first I did the Pretend To Be Passing By routine when he got home at night and gave it ‘Oh Councillor Cummings come and have a cheeseburger’. Then I’d ‘forget’ to ask for his ‘money’ and soon he was having a ‘free’ burger every day.
I let it go for a week then gave him a cheeseburger and a bill for nearly twenty pounds. He was furious and said he thought I’d been giving him the burgers for free. I said ‘Why would I?’ He said ‘Because I’m on the Cheeseburger Van Licensing Committee.’ I said ‘I like the way you’re thinking,’ and took back the bill and we looked at each other for a long time (but not in a saucy way) and slap, bang, wallop, he was in my pocket.
With Gripper Wright it was about identifying his weak spot which, as anyone in Dundee could have told you, was monkey bars. Like anyone who has lived a little knows, monkey bars are the heroin of the playground and Gripper had got hooked at an early age. He’d had some recognition62 for his swinging before age caught up with him and he’d gone into politics instead.
Dundee’s monkey-bar scene centres round the Dawson Park bars which for local swingers are like Hampden Park and Dunkirk rolled into one. They’re so popular that weekends are Kids Only but when Frank and I found out Gripper lives round the corner from Dawson Park our ears pricked up like rabbits.
Early that Saturday morning we went and holed up in the bushes beside the tennis courts. Those bushes give a grandstand view of the monkey bars but Frank was annoying me by saying stuff as if he was in the Army and I was just about to call the whole thing off when Lo And
Behold we saw Gripper Wright skulk through the gate. He had a quick look about then let out the most magnificent scream (later agreed by me and Frank to sound like a Red Indian) and ran at the bars. It was a wonderful sight and we gave him a few minutes out of respect for the performance then crawled out the bushes and walked over. ‘Having a good time up there, Gripper?’ I asked and slap, bang, wallop, he was in my other pocket.
That was two councillors down but I hit a problem with Swapper Coley. The guy was a real Goody Two-Shoes, even all the swapping he did was for charity,63 so I knew I was going to have to come up with something special. Frank and I tailed him home from the council and the one thing I noticed was how cold he looked. It was getting into winter and the guy didn’t have a big coat on. If someone doesn’t wear a big coat in winter they’re either mad, a hard nut or in between big coats. Swapper wasn’t a hard nut (you could tell by his walking style which was pretty desperate stuff) and he wouldn’t have been allowed to work on the council if he was mad, so I had my way in.
The next day Frank and I went up to Debenhams. We went to the Big Coats department and saw there was only one duffel coat left so I distracted the girls with a story about Gavin Hastings while Frank nicked the duffel and slipped away. I asked the girls if they had any decent duffel and they said that there was one left and we all walked over and then they started with the Hands Over The Mouth and Lock The Doors There’s Been A Robbery stuff and I was giving it Eyebrows Up and What’s All This About material in return.
Sure enough it made the paper64 and we gave it a few days to calm down then went and laid the duffel on Swapper’s doorstep with a note saying it was from ‘An Admirer’. We hid in a bush and took photos of him trying it on and looking all pleased with himself. For the next week we kept an eye on Swapper and you should have seen the guy, showing off to the neighbours and stopping for chats just so he could get a compliment on the duffel.
Swapper Coley65
After the week was up I put him out his misery. I waited till he was halfway up his path then stormed up behind him like Roger Cook and gave it, ‘Having a good time in the duffel councillor, having a good time in the duffel?’ He was all cocky and said that yes, he was having a good time and I was welcome to feel the material if I was another duffel fan. I took out the newspaper article about the theft and the photos of him wearing the duffel and held them in his face. ‘Touché,’ I said, which later I regretted as it would have been better to say, ‘Game, set and match.’ Either way, I had Swapper Coley by the balls.
With the Cheeseburger Van Licensing Committee under my control I soon put an end to The Rumours by having the licence revoked of any van owner that I didn’t trust. The message got through – Bob Servant was in charge and he wasn’t in the mood for jokes unless they were his jokes. With fewer vans on the road everyone was happy. Van owners were talking to each other again and there were plenty of punters to go round. The Cheeseburger Civil War was over but I barely had time to draw breath before the arrival of The Cheeseburger World War. It was like getting the better of Chris Eubank, walking round the corner and being clotheslined by Frank Bruno.
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60 See The Dundee Courier, 19 September 1968 – ‘Actor “Startled” By News Of Statue’.
61 He doesn’t.
62 See The Dundee Courier 30 June 1964 – ‘Local Monkey Bar Youngster “Could Go All The Way” (“He’s Spiderman without the arrogance,” says Arthur Justice, Fixture Secretary of the “Broughty Swingers”.)’.
63 See The Dundee Courier 2 November 1984 – ‘Dundee Man Donates Annual Swapping Windfall to Charity (“It’s something I’ve always done,” says Coley. “It’s just a case of asking about and believing in yourself.”)’.
64 See The Dundee Courier, 26 November 1986 – ‘Duffel Coat “Opportunist” Hunted’.
65 Photo courtesy of Bob Servant’s private collection, all rights reserved. Inscription on back of photograph reads: ‘Stitching up Swapper Coley with the stolen duffel’.
29
The Cheeseburger World War
The Cheeseburger World War was fought between Dundee’s Cheeseburger Community and the Rest of The World. It was like David against Goliath’s Dad and the worst thing was that it was the local paper that kicked the whole thing off. Up until 1988 The Courier had stayed on the sidelines with relation to the cheeseburger scene because they knew a lot of their readers were committed cheeseburger fans. But suddenly a few bits and pieces began to pop up in the paper. There would be a story about falling health rates or rising burglaries and I felt like a scientist standing at the top of a volcano with all the tourists taking photos but I’m looking at a little plume of smoke and whispering, ‘Oh Sweet Jesus it’s party time.’
Sure enough one morning I woke up to Frank banging on the door like a lunatic and shouting, ‘They’ve come for us, Bob, the bastards have come for us!’ The Courier had done a splash and it wasn’t pretty reading.66 Over the following weeks all sorts of jokers and Big Shots started arriving in Dundee. National newspapers, TV cameras, photographers, they all showed up. You’d think the Nuremberg Trials had been moved to Dundee Sheriff Court and the media chased us van owners about like hyenas.
I sent out word to the other van owners and we met in Dawson Park for a pow-wow. There was a lot of squabbling and I let them tire out then nodded to Frank and he called for silence. I stood on a crate and started to speak. Over the years people have talked a lot about what I said that day in Dawson Park and I’ve got my own opinions. I’ve heard the Churchill comparisons and the stuff about Wogan, although personally I don’t think Wogan would have thrived in that situation because it was too serious. Others call it the Declaration of Dawson Park or Servant’s Last Stand which personally I think is a bad one because the only other guy I know who had a Last Stand was Custer and that didn’t exactly go to plan. Anyway, if I was to tell you about everything I said in my speech I’d reduce you to an emotional wreck, so let me give you the main event which was the rabbit story.
I announced that I wanted to tell a story about a hare, a tortoise and a hamster. I started by talking about the hare running off up the road and the tortoise strolling off after it while the hamster just took it easy and watched them go. Once the other two had gone, the hamster bred like rabbits. I mentioned that I’d rather have used rabbits than hamsters in the story but rabbits were probably too close to hare, but the van owners shouted that they wouldn’t have a problem with both hares and rabbits being in the story so I started again by talking about a hare, a tortoise and a rabbit. I talked about how the hare ran off up the road and the tortoise went strolling after him. The hare got so far in front he decided to have a kip right before the finish line and the tortoise caught up and strolled past the hare and the tortoise was nearly at the finish line when a shitload of rabbits all ran past him.
When I finished there was a stunned silence, like I knew there would be, and I closed my eyes and whispered ‘Unite Or Die’. When I opened them people looked at me with a new level of respect and understanding. I nodded to Frank and he handed round the forms. These were membership forms for my Big Idea, a pressure group called Cheese Burger Van Owners (CHEBUVAO). I told the van owners that we needed to be organised and we needed to have a united front. Every time the media ran a story about the cheeseburger situation we needed a spokesman to be right there answering back with bells on. They asked who that spokesman should be and I scratched my left ear and Frank shouted ‘Bob Servant’ which may or may not have been connected to me scratching my ear.
There were a few grumbles about that but then I reminded them that I had a ‘certain influence’ over a ‘certain committee’ with a ‘certain city council’ and they caught my drift and agreed to my appointment. ‘Just don’t use that shit about the rabbits,’ shouted one of them, which was a clever way of keeping me humble by pretending to make fun of me and I didn’t have a problem with it.
At first I enjoyed being the spokesman of CHEBUVAO and the media
mob liked me because I was a straight talker. Yes, some of my comments were maybe a little bit aggressive and some people say that by the end I was getting arrogant67 but after two years in the job I’d become an absolute wreck. The original mania died down but, every week or two, someone would go into Ninewells with scurvy and it would all kick off again.
Not only was I dealing with the media, I was also having to keep Tuck, Gripper and Swapper on my side and that was becoming a big ask. They were under huge pressure and starting to crack. They banned Double Deckers, Two-Handed Burgers and Meat Attacks because they all had more calories than fifty Mars bars (as if that’s a bad thing), but they were under constant pressure from the rest of the council and by August 1990 they were complaining that they felt like the Dutch boy with his cock68 in the dam.
With all this on my shoulders I wasn’t myself so when I got the invite to go on the TV show I said yes without thinking. All I was told was that it was a debate show, they admired my straight talking and they thought it should get a wider audience. It was on Grampian TV so Frank drove me up to Aberdeen in one of the vans then threw a major tantrum when I said he had to open up the van in the car park while I was inside doing the show. I told him business is like a shark, it never sleeps and you can lose a limb. Anyway, the debate was a complete stitch-up and the less said about it the better69 but Frank did nearly thirty quid’s worth while he was waiting.
The fallout from the TV show, through no fault of mine, was pretty disastrous. The media said I was ‘a madman’ and that CHEBUVAO were acting like the mafia, former cheeseburger fans started abusing us in the street because of the Obesity Forum’s lies, and my guys were booted off the council’s Cheeseburger Van Licensing Committee and replaced by hardliners who came out in the press and said it was time the city’s takeaway food scene went ‘Back To Basics’, which I didn’t need a translator to know meant ‘Fish and Chips’.
