Bob Servant (10 page)

_________________________

39
See
The Dundee Courier
, 5 April 1986 – ‘
Local Man Banned From Broughty Greengrocer
(“He'd stand at the counter making comments about the vegetables and weeping with laughter”)'. See the
Daily Express
17 May 1991 – ‘
Major Pleasure Promised to Female Cabinet Members'
. See
The Times
, 16 November 1991 – ‘
Prime Minister Anticipates “Major Election”'.

1970, 1971 and 1972 were big years for me. I learnt a lot about life, I learnt a lot about business and, believe it or not, I learnt new ways in which Frank was an idiot. Traditionally, Frank had shown himself to be an idiot with things to do with his mind and his mouth but he pulled out a whole new twist over those years by showing me that slapstick could be a bad thing.

I've always loved slapstick and I still do. If you were to walk past my house on a Saturday teatime you'd be forgiven for thinking Billy Connolly was giving me a one-to-one or Del Boy was in here doing the falling through the bar routine over and over again but in fact it's just me watching the famous television show
You've Been Framed
.

I'm not sure if you watch
You've Been Framed
but I'll tell you right now that I've been watching the telly for fifty years and there's not been a better show and that includes the Coronation and the Cuban Missile Crisis. If you've not seen the show,
You've Been Framed
is a collection of short documentaries when everything is fine to start with and people are laughing and talking to each other and the boy on the camera will shout ‘Grab the rope' or ‘Stand closer to the water' or ‘Come on then, do something' and you're sitting watching the documentary and you know what's coming so you're already sort of giggling to yourself and then BANG! it's slapstick time.

There's a few storylines that crop up a lot. Sometimes one of the people in the documentary will fall into water. Sometimes they'll fall off their bike into a bush. Sometimes they'll be hit in the knackers by a ball thrown by a kid. Sometimes they'll be dancing with the bride and the bride's dress will fall down, and so on and so on. It doesn't really matter because it's nearly always a belter. In fact the
only bit of
You've Been Framed
I don't like is when they sometimes show a collection of documentaries where it's two babies kissing and the audience gives it the ‘Aaaahhh' routine. If I want to see people kissing I'd watch
Gone With The Wind
or
Blind Date
and I'd want them to be grown-ups at least.

My point is that I'm a slapstick fan and probably one of the biggest around. If I'm walking to Stewpot's and a kid cycles into a lamppost or some skirt decks it in her heels then I'll be doubled over for about ten minutes. One time I saw a guy trip over his dog's lead and fall into an industrial bin outside Safeways and I was laughing so much I had to go home and put myself to bed and really, really try to get it out my head because I was genuinely worried I was going to have a heart attack. For the next month I took the long way to Stewpot's because I was scared if I went past Safeways I'd suffer an aftershock.

So when me and Frank started the window-cleaning round and he spent the next three years performing slapstick you'd think I'd be happy. But I wasn't because it was a pain in the arse. He was damaging the equipment and it hardly filled our customers with confidence. I tried to help him. First I put a photo of Terry Wogan on the bucket to give him some company up there but then he started
talking to Wogan, lost what little concentration he had and down he came. Then he said it was just bad luck so I bought a so-called lucky wooden elephant off Gypsy Henderson but that just gave Frank someone else to talk to and Lo And Behold he was lying on the ground and giving it the Can't Feel My Feet stuff.

The Wogan Bucket
⁴⁰

If I was to list Frank's falls between 1971 and 1973 then this book would be as big as a house. Well, probably not quite as big as mine but probably as big as yours. Anyway, the falls were mostly the same. I'd tell Frank not to fall off the ladder – he'd fall off the ladder, I'd take a photo for insurance purposes, that photo would somehow wind up in Stewpot's, Frank would go in the huff because the photo had wound up in Stewpot's, Frank would resign, Frank would ask for his job back, I'd tell Frank not to fall off the ladder, he'd fall off the ladder, etc, etc.

It was tough going but there were some good moments along the way. I've just been up to my attic and gone into my Frank Being An Idiot Box. Frank says I keep the stuff in that box to pull out and humiliate him which is just pathetic. Anyway, here's some of his best falls.

Incident Report
⁴¹

Date
– February 1971

Place
– Bill Wood's garden on Strathearn Road

What Happened?
– A nice soft landing for Frank's soft head. I'd left him up there talking to the Wogan bucket while Bill and I had a chat about a few political rumblings at the Bowling Club and then we heard this yell and, surprise surprise, there was Francis whimpering away.

Blame For Insurance Purposes
– Frank

Incident Report

Date
– October 1972

Place
– Dawson Park

What Happened?
– We'd just won the contract for the Dawson Park greenhouses. Frank had taken to wearing a plastic helmet which in my view made him over-confident and that was proven here with gusto. This was probably my favourite of Frank's falls because of the way that just when he thought it was all over he got spanked by the ladder. It took me and the Parkies ten minutes to stop laughing, get a grip of ourselves and reluctantly lift the ladder off him.

Blame For Insurance Purposes
– Frank

Incident Report

Date
– August 1973

Place
– The Taychreggan Hotel

What Happened?
– This was embarrassing for several reasons. The Taychreggan was the biggest job on the round, Frank was left still holding Gypsy Henderson's so-called lucky elephant, he fell twice in one day, and he was wearing his Christmas jumper in the middle of summer. Under the circumstances it was hard to feel sorry for him and I didn't.

Blame For Insurance Purposes
– Frank, Gypsy Henderson

_________________________

40
Photo courtesy of
The Dundee Courier
,
Rising Business Stars
, 19 July 1974.

41
All four dramatic photos courtesy of Bob Servant's private collection, all rights reserved. In each case the inscription on the back of the photograph is the ‘Incident Report' given.

Even though some of them were decent entertainment I knew that Frank's falls had to finish. He was at risk of breaking the ladder and not all of our customers had as good a sense of humour as me and they played the Extremely Unprofessional and You're Sacked cards. I worked out that the only way I could guarantee that Frank would stop falling off the ladder was to get a real-life Strong Man to hold the ladder in a vice-like grip while I went off and charmed the customers with my eyes and stories.

The toughest nut I knew, of course, was Cruncher McKenzie, but he hadn't spoken to me since the
Lord Dundee's Lover
cliffhanger fiasco. I went to the shops and bought a copy of
Poetic Gems
by William McGonagall
⁴²
and went up to his house.

Cruncher opened the door and did a look that could freeze a snowman. Then he saw the book and cracked the most wonderful smile and said ‘In you come Robert'. We sat down in Cruncher's living room and he talked for about an hour about McGonagall and how he was much misunderstood and how Cruncher saw similarities with his own life.

‘Was McGonagall a hard nut as well, Cruncher?' I asked and Cruncher looked very serious and said, ‘Robert, he was the bravest man who ever held a pen.' I wanted to say ‘What about Tony Hart?' so much it gave me a sore tummy but I bit my tongue and suggested that Cruncher came and worked with me and Frank on the windows.

Cruncher said that he'd been working as a bouncer at the Goodbye And All The Very Best Nursing Home because they'd let in a young piece of skirt and all the old boys were thumping each other to try and impress her. I did a That's News To Me look and said working on the windows would get him out and about and Frank and I would happily talk books with him all day long. He had a wee think and then smiled again (not as good as the first time but by no means badly) and said, ‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers,' which I recognised as a lyric from an Elvis song. ‘Just don't wear your Blue Suede Shoes, Cruncher,' I said and winked so he knew I was in on the joke but he didn't seem to want to keep it going.