Bob Servant by Bob Servant Read Free Book Online Page B

suggested we head up to Simpson’s Silver in Monifieth.
    These days Simpson has that big place in the town and he’s in the paper all the time with his advert. 30 Whenever the advert’s in the paper I show the boys in Stewpot’s and say ‘More like Bin Laden’s cave.’
    Chappy always waits till the laughter’s stopped and then claims he made that joke about Simpson’s advert back in the nineties. As I point out to him, Bin Laden’s only hit the big time since 9/11 but according to Chappy he ‘heard whispers’ about Bin Laden before then. But even if he had, and he hadn’t, then there’s no way that any of us would have understood the joke and I would have remembered the fall-out for sure because it would have led to a day full of questions, debate and a few people going home in the huff. Just like 9/11.
    (That’s an example of a joke when you say something for Shock Value. I’m very good at it but if you’re thinking of trying it then pickyour audience carefully. Put it this way, I tried it once at a funeral and the response was absolutely pathetic.) 31
    Anyway, to kick off The Great Skirt Hunt, Frank and I headed up to Simpson’s Silver which back then was just Simpson selling jewellery out his garage. He showed us these two silver chains which, to be fair, looked the bee’s knees and he told us they were just off the boat from London. I suppose it should have appeared suspicious that anything would come from London by boat but we fell for Simpson’s patter and took them off his hands.
    What a joke those chains were. Frank’s neck had turned green by the time we’d got back to the Ferry and I wore mine in the bath and it started fizzing and giving off heat. As I said to Frank, after we put the chains in the bin, if Simpson had just told me that the chain would fizz and give off heat when it encountered water then I could have built that into a story or a magic trick, but for it to happen when it was just me and the chain in the bath was a completely wasted opportunity.
    We didn’t need the chains anyway. It sounds daft but even Frank was getting some attention at the time and that always cheered me up because things went so badly for him. Probably the thing that held him back the most was his habit with skirt that if he didn’t think they were listening to his stories he would tap them on the top of the head, which didn’t exactly work in his favour. He also put far too much pressure on himself and if things started to go wrong he’d completely overreact, like the time he took some skirt to Dawson Park on a picnic but forgot the plates and it took her three hours to talk him down from the climbing frame.
    To be fair to Frank, if I must, I was having my own problems.
    _________________________
    30 See multiple copies of
The Dundee Courier
– ‘
Come to My Aladdin’s Cave!’
    31 See
The Dundee Courier
, 28 August 1987 – ‘
Local Man’s Zombie Act Disrupts Funeral,
(“For me, I played the right joke to the wrong crowd,” said Servant, 41)’.

13
Women Not Saying What They Mean
    Over the years I’ve got used to the fact that women can be a bit funny about saying what they really mean. It used to annoy me but these days it just makes me laugh and if anything I feel sorry for them. Women say bad things to me and I just nod and smile and say, ‘Oh really? I’m an idiot am I?’ and I shake my head and do that thing with my eyes that veteran police detectives do when they’re in the interview room and having to listen to the same old defence from the murderer that they’ve heard a thousand times before. Back at the time of The Great Skirt Hunt, however, I was still very much finding my feet and learning tough lessons by the day.
    The incident that caused me big problems started off innocent enough. I was at The Sands Disco down at the Esplanade with Frank and Chappy.