Delete This at Your Peril Read online

  Neil Forsyth is an author and journalist. A fellow Dundonian and friend to Bob Servant for over twenty years, he has recently completed Servant’s biography, Bob Servant: Hero of Dundee, also available from Birlinn. Forsyth is also author of Other People’s Money, the biography of fraudster Elliot Castro, and a novel, Let Them Come Through.

  Praise for Delete This At Your Peril

  ‘Delete This at Your Peril is a very, very funny book and a perfect present for anybody who has: A) a sense of humour and B) gets irritated by Internet spammers and their tiresome scams . . . You will piss yourself and then quote sections of this book repeatedly within your circle of friends’

  Irvine Welsh

  ‘I have worked with a lot of funny men – Peter Cook, Spike Milligan, Harry Enfield. Bob Servant is in a class of his own’

  Barry Fantoni, Private Eye

  ‘Neil has captured something particular of the Dundonian, surreal sense of humour. And I don’t think we’ve ever had that before. We’ve had Billy Connolly and Lex McLean’s Glasgow stories and traditions, but now we’ve got this Dundee creature who is just so funny . . . I was in hysterics’

  Brian Cox

  ‘Incredibly funny’

  Jimmy Boyle, author of A Sense of Freedom

  ‘Hilarious. I laughed so much I nearly gave him my account number’ Martin Kelner, The Guardian

  ‘Reminds me how good good comic writing can be . . . The surrealism is perfect’

  Scotland on Sunday

  ‘Delete This at Your Peril carries the spoof letter genre into the internet age . . . A former cheeseburger magnate and semi-retired window cleaner, Bob is a delightfully deranged but likeable rogue. Drinking in and chasing ‘skirt’ around the bars of Broughty Ferry with ne’er-do-well mates such as Frank The Plank, he is a late-middle-aged working-class eccentric in the vein of John Shuttleworth . . . a living, breathing creation of comic genius . . . Today Broughty Ferry. Tomorrow, the world?’

  Bookbag

  ‘He’s a Henry Root for the digital age . . . a hilarious collection’

  GT Magazine

  ‘Hurrah for Bob Servant! He wreaks revenge on the fraudsters, making them dance to his tune with his wonderfully surreal replies. Read it in private as it will make you laugh out loud, and as for Bob’s victims, it really couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of crooks’

  The Book Magazine

  ‘Bob neatly turns the tables, leaving a trail of comic carnage as he gradually draws the unsuspecting crooks into his own outlandish schemes . . . eminently readable and absurdly funny’

  Cherwell

  ‘Genius! Highly entertaining and brilliantly deranged’

  Maxim

  ‘A hilarious collection of preposterous, genuine email exchanges between comedy genius Bob and his victims’

  Source

  ‘Bob is a serious man, a thoughtful man, a complicated man, who knows that when holding a man’s cock in the bathroom you look straight ahead

  Sharp Magazine

  ‘Some of the funniest e-mails you will ever read [and] some of the best comedy I have read in a while. If you ever wanted to “get even” with spammers, live vicariously through Bob Servant. The ride is wild and extremely funny’

  Lunch.com

  ‘This book will most certainly entertain and amuse. Delete This At Your Own Peril is funnier than 365 joke-of-the-day emails as the spammers realise they are dealing with a raving loony’

  Serious Comedy Site

  ‘After I finished being sick with laughter, I finally get round to writing a review. You can do the old fella a favour by purchasing his excellent book or just send him the money because he’ll only go back to window cleaning to fund his jazz mag collection’

  www.scaryduck.blogspot.com

  ‘These are the writings of a clearly deranged mind’

  Soteria

  ‘Delete This at Your Peril will not win the Booker Prize’

  The Kilkenny Advertiser

  Delete This At Your Peril

  Also by Neil Forsyth

  Bob Servant – Hero of Dundee

  Non Fiction

  Other People’s Money – The Rise and Fall of Britain’s Most Audacious Fraudster (with Elliot Castro)

  Fiction

  Let Them Come Through

  www.neilforsyth.com

  Delete This At Your Peril

  ----------------------------------

  The Bob Servant Emails

  ----------------------------------

  Bob Servant

  with Neil Forsyth

  This edition published in 2010 by

  Birlinn Limited

  West Newington House

  10 Newington Road

  Edinburgh

  EH9 1QS

  www.birlinn.co.uk

  First published in 2007 by Aurum Press Ltd, London

  3

  Copyright © Neil Forsyth 2007, 2010

  The moral right of Neil Forsyth to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without

  the express written permission of the publisher.

  Every effort has been made to locate the copyright holders of the

  images within this book. The photographs used are for illustrative purposes only

  and do not imply any particular attitudes, behaviours,

  or actions on the part of anyone who appears in them

  p.9 Image used by permission of www.ChinaStockphotos.com

  p.11 Image used by permission of www.northrup.org

  p.17 Image used by permission of Pretendware Clothing Ltd

  p.60 Image used by permission of www.doodle-world.com

  p.77 Image used by permission of www.Painting.About.Com

  p.81 Image used by permission of www.priveco.com

  p.145 Image used by permission of Dundee United FC

  p.197 Image used by permission of www.potsaplenty.com.au

  p. 202 Image used by permission of www.eloradollhouse.co.uk

  ISBN: 978 1 84158 919 0

  eBook ISBN: 978 0 85790 000 5

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Designed and typeset by Brinnoven, Livingston

  Printed and bound by CPI Cox & Wyman, Reading, RG1 8EX

  Contents

  Introduction: Meet Bob Servant

  1 Lions, Gold and Confusion

  2 Bob and the Postie

  3 Alexandra, Bob and Champion

  4 Uncle Bob’s African Adventure

  5 The Sea Could Not Take Him, No Woman Could Tame Him

  6 Olga, Sasha and the Jamaica Lakers

  7 The Hunt for Jerren Jimjams

  8 From Lanzhou to Willy’s Chinese Palace

  9 Bobby and Benjamin are New Friends

  10 Natalia and Her Grandmother

  11 Peter’s Pots

  Acknowledgements

  For my big brother Alan, with love

  Introduction:

  Meet Bob Servant

  I remember the first time I saw Bob Servant very well. It was in the late 1980s and I was a ten-year-old cycling through Broughty Ferry when I saw a burger van opening for business down at the harbour. This was a novel event both for me and, it would turn out, for Broughty Ferry and I skilfully reined in my Raleigh Burner and watched the momentous scene unfold. There were a couple of glum-looking men sprucing the van up, switching on ovens and so on, but my attention was drawn to another man who sat on a nearby ben
ch watching them and occasionally offering words of advice that appeared to go largely unheeded.

  I can really remember only a few details. One is that Bob had a bright red face, another is that he was drinking what I thought at the time was a milkshake but I now strongly suspect was a cocktail, and the final thing I can remember was what he said. He said, with an epic sense of despair, ‘Fuck me Frank, watch the fucking sausages.’

  The next time I saw Bob was perhaps five years later when I opened my bedroom curtains and there he was at the other side. The suddenness of my appearance caught him unawares and for a moment Bob threatened to fall off his ladder but he caught himself and gripped the window frame, panting and sweating and saying, ‘Christ, you nearly fucking did for me there son.’

  Bob, it seemed, had taken over the window-cleaning round that included our house. I can recall my mum’s confusion at the increased frequency of the window-cleaning team’s appearance. ‘Someone’s making a bloody fortune,’ my dad used to summarise when he returned from work to hear of yet another visit.

  Bob and I quickly became not friends, but certainly firm associates. For a bored schoolboy, Bob was a man of the world who advised with little encouragement on anything from women to feverish speculation on local thefts, and his ongoing feud with a local newspaper. For Bob, I was a willing listener, and the search for willing listeners has probably been the great cause of Bob’s life.

  In the winter Bob would appear on Saturday mornings, scaling his ladder dressed for Kilimanjaro rather than our two-storey home. I would crack open the frosted glass and it would begin. Both he and I would be going independently to watch Dundee United in the afternoon and, from deep within his array of padding, Bob would offer a range of optimistic predictions as steam rose from his bucket and multiple layers.

  In the summer, Bob would curl a thick arm over the windowsill and start, usually with:

  ‘Ah, how you doing? I was just saying to Frank there . . .’

  And then he would unleash a story, a joke or, often, a plan. Bob’s plans were extraordinary, containing an audacious mixture of ambition and completely undiluted self-belief. He toyed for a long time with entering local politics for what he called a clean-up campaign. That plan was quietly abandoned when Bob and Frank, whom he had appointed his election agent, could not decide on a suitable slogan.

  Frank, I should point out, was Bob’s regular window-cleaning sidekick and, I presumed (correctly), the original Frank from the burger van. Sometimes there would be other men with Bob, all of whose grave moods would clash markedly with his, but Frank was the standard. Perhaps because of this sustained exposure to Bob’s peculiarities, Frank’s depressive air was almost overpowering.

  While Bob was halfway into my bedroom explaining how he was going to build a private zoo, or complete the Dawson Park monkey bars course in less than a minute, or swim the River Tay once things warmed up a bit, I would peek down to Frank, who would be standing at the foot of Bob’s ladder.

  At the very best he would look crushingly bored. At worst I would sometimes catch him staring at Bob’s ladder with a distant look in his eyes, as if calculating just how many of life’s worries would vanish with a hefty kick.

  It was a few years on, when my friends and I began sneaking into Broughty Ferry’s bars, that I saw a different side to Bob. His window-cleaning operation had been passed to strangers but his message on the matter was very clear.

  ‘Not to worry,’ he told me with an elaborate wink, along with the much-repeated suggestion that he had landed a significant windfall on the round to go with the riches from his years as the owner of a cheeseburger van.

  There was also something about gypsies stealing his ladders that always sounded to me like a botched insurance job. Once, emboldened by drink, I put forward that theory to Bob, who replied with a quote from Winston Churchill that bore no relation to the situation whatsoever.

  It became strange to walk into a Broughty Ferry pub and for Bob not to be there. If the place were quiet he would be hunched over a barstool, lecturing the barman and jabbing a finger to make his point. In busier pubs he would retreat with companions to a table, though this didn’t stop the barman being generously incorporated by Bob into his conversation.

  He had an eclectic collection of associates who you will soon discover are in his thoughts to this day. There was a uniformed security guard, a local lawyer who had been struck off and a group of traffic wardens who I’m sure were supposed to be working at the time. But more often than not, Bob’s immediate company would be drawn from any combination of three men.

  There was a small, sharp-faced man known as Tommy Peanuts who wore a suit with loosened tie, which did not seem to halt daytime excursions through the pubs of Broughty Ferry. He was quick with the cutting remark and often this would be aimed at an unknowing Bob’s expense. I would feel a strange pang of shared betrayal when Tommy slipped in some mockery and Bob laughed innocently away.

  Chappy Williams and Bob were locked in a love–hate relationship that clearly still rumbles along. The two should be brothers, such is the inherent rivalry as they compete for social standing in the bars of Broughty Ferry. This battle is generally waged through incredibly intricate practical jokes often taking days, if not weeks, in planning and execution.

  And then there was, and is, Frank. A man referred to by Bob with, I believe, genuine fondness as Frank the Plank. As I gained increased access to Frank’s company I realised very quickly that he wavers spectacularly on the very edge of sanity. Much of this is undoubtedly due to living next door to Bob. Whatever warped scheme or activity Bob is indulging in, you never have to look far to find Frank.

  So that, for me, was Bob Servant. I moved away from Dundee, and a highlight of any return would be a chance meeting with Bob, for whom nothing ever really changed except the steady flow of ideas. He thought for a long time about opening a café, only to give up in fury when someone else did the same. He started another clean-up campaign which started and finished with him shopping a corrupt member of the local Limbo Walking Club to local press. He declared to myself and other astonished drinkers that he was going to buy a pair of ostriches and mate them in his garden (he never did).

  But away from thwarted dreams, Bob had been doing something else. It was something that no one knew about and it was when I became the first person to be told that the relationship between Bob and myself changed forever.

  ***

  As I sat reading a newspaper in a Broughty Ferry bar of an evening in early 2007, a familiar combination of reddened forehead and bunnet appeared above the page. It was Bob and he wanted to talk, but there was something different about him. There was none of his usual grandstanding and he employed a nervous whisper, darting his eyes around the pub in fear.

  He confirmed that I was a writer and then slipped into a muddled explanation of some strange pursuit he had undertaken after winning a computer in a raffle at the local bowling club. He talked of Africans and Russians, of emails and computers, and hinted at long nights of cheap wine and Internet exchanges.

  ‘I mean,’ he said with a sly grin, ‘They’re chancers, these people, Neil, real cowboys, but we’ve had some fun.’

  Intrigued, I accepted bob’s invitation to learn more. We walked through the darkened streets in near silence, with Bob occasionally attempting further description only to give up in frustration or an extended bout of laughter. To be perfectly honest, I was a little nervous. Bob’s eccentricity was all very well in public but, on the way to his house with him babbling about lions and rubber belts, it was slightly disturbing.

  My alarm increased when we arrived at Bob’s home. Although an impressive sight from outside, the interior was a study in chaos. There were collections of empty bottles throughout, various pieces of fancy dress hung from doorframes and an extraordinary number of novelty duvet sets. After we weaved through to the living room bob directed me to a computer that he activated and went to get us drinks.

  As the computer warmed up I
noticed some scraps of paper beside the keyboard with scribbled notes. Amongst the jottings were names with arrows connecting to startling terms. ‘Lanzhou’, for example, pointed to ‘rubber belts’, which in turn pointed to ‘stuff Clive’s mouth with prawn crackers’. Bob returned with the drinks and brought up an email account on the screen.

  ‘That’s it,’ he said simply and retired to a couch on which he lay in silent contemplation as I made my first entry into a very different world. An hour or two later I turned back to him.

  ‘Bob?’ I asked, ‘Would you be interested in writing a book?’

  Neil Forsyth and Bob Servant (right), Broughty Ferry, summer 2007

  Each man is a hero and an oracle to somebody, and to that person whatever he says has an enhanced value.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82)

  The thing is Xiong, you’re over there in China and I’m here in Broughty Ferry. But you’re just a man and I’m just a man. That’s what I’m saying. We’re all just men. Apart from women.

  Bob Servant (1945–)

  1

  Lions, Gold and Confusion

  From: Jack Thompson

  To: Bob Servant

  Subject: Delete This At Your Peril

  FROM HIS ROYAL HIGHNEST, JACK THOMPSON

  Dear sir,

  Permit me to inform you of my desire of going into business. I got your name and contact from the chamber of commerce and industry. I am JACK THOMPSON, the only son of late King Arawi of tribal land. My father was a very wealthy traditional ruler, poisoned to death by his rivals in the traditional tussle about royalties and related matters.

  Before his death here in Togo he called me on his sick bed and told me of a trunk box containing $75m kept in a security company where i amin the city of Sokode. It was because of the wealth he was poisoned by his rivals. I now seek a foreign partner where I will transfer the proceeds for investment as you may advise. I am willing to offer you 20% of the sum as a compensation for your effort/ input and 5% for any expenses that may occour.