Bob Servant (20 page)

Obviously Father O'Neill is out so it looks like I'll have to go with the Church of Scotland mob. One of the things I don't like about funerals is how the minister or priest makes it all about him and Jesus so I have told Frank to be very firm with the minister about this. I want him to concentrate on talking about me and to describe me as a Family Man because that always goes down well and gets the waterworks going amongst the punters. When we have our Funeral Masterplan Review Meetings Frank always gives me pelters for the Family Man line but I think it's fair enough. Every family I've ever met I've got on well with, sometimes very well, and as far as I'm concerned that makes me a Family Man.

I was kind enough to help Frank write his speech for the funeral. He grumbles about it a bit, saying that it's degrading to him and ‘jazzes up' my situation but he's promised to have a go at it and I suppose that's all I can ask. Having said that, the material's so strong even Frank shouldn't be able to go too wrong.
⁹¹
After the joke ban, the crying, the music, the Family Man reference and Frank's speech, people are going to feel like they've been punched in the heart by Geoff Capes so it's only fair that they're allowed to let their hair down at the wake. Within reason.

Frank has been told very clearly indeed that his job doesn't end when he leaves the church. He has two main duties at the wake. The first is to monitor the skirt situation. There will be some absolute crackers at my funeral, seriously top-drawer skirt. That's very much a compliment to me and it should be respected. The boys should
stay away from the skirt at the wake unless they're going to talk to them about me and how sad it is that I'm not there to talk to the skirt myself and make them laugh like drains. Secondly any stories told about me, and God knows there will be a few, should be stories where I come out of the story well. If Chappy starts up with The Gin Crisis or any of my other temporary setbacks then Frank should set off the fire alarm.

Dundee has some of the harshest funeral critics you'll ever meet but they're fair with it. Yes, they'll go to town with their reviews of a bad one but they recognise quality and effort when they see it and I hope to turn that to my advantage. I'd be surprised if anyone in the city has a better Funeral Masterplan in their funeral drawer than mine and that gives me a real opportunity. If this book doesn't make me a Hero, and I find that hard to believe, then I have to face the fact that I might arrive at my funeral as just another punter. If the Masterplan works out though, then I'll at least leave as a Hero. The weak link, of course, is Frank. But what can I do? I'm stuck with the situation. I'm stuck with Frank, I'm stuck with the fact I'm not far off needing a funeral and I'm stuck with the fact I live in Dundee.

_________________________

88
See
The Dundee Courier
23 June 1997 – ‘
Broughty Man Says He Was “Only Helping”
(“The children seemed unusually informed,” said Mrs Blackburn, Head of Mathematics at Eastern Primary, “Until I overheard the gentleman whispering the answers from the window.”)'.

89
See
The Dundee Courier
, 11 February 1990 –
‘Arrogant English Athlete Refuses Council's Naming Honour'
.

90
See
The Dundee Courier
, 18 March 1987 –
‘Colourful Local Personality Passes Away'
. See
The Scotsman
, 18 March 1987 –
‘Dundee Murderer Hacked To Death'
.

91
Frank let me see this speech, which was clearly typed out by Bob (complete with stage directions) and referred to by Frank as ‘padded cell stuff'. It's on pp. 134–35.

Well, here we are. Nearly done and the fat lady's about to swing.
⁹²
I don't mind telling you that I'm bloody knackered. It's not easy this book lark. No wonder that bird from
Murder She Wrote
looks so old. I walk round the house and it's just paper, words and memories. But there's another smash book in those words and once again I've given it to the boy Forsyth on a plate – this house is getting like the Hit Factory – and then he swans in and does the interviews and I'm left wandering about Dundee looking for nods.

Telling your life story, the whole shebang, isn't easy. I feel like my brain has been pickled by a top chef and that my heart has been inflated with a foot pump by Russell Grant. But like a boxer on the ropes I'm pushing myself back into the ring for one last haymaker because I have a final thought on this Hero business and it's this – maybe the only possible reason left for me not to have become the undisputed Hero of Dundee is Dundee itself. Maybe I've been looking at things all wrong. If I didn't like Dundee so much then I could have been a Hero someplace else.

It's a scary thought, there's no doubt about that, but once it was in my head it took off like a pigeon. I started to realise all the things I could have done. I could have gone to Hollywood or Beverly Hills, whichever is closer, and stuck the black glasses on and smoked Hamlets round the swimming baths with the Big Shots.

I could have gone somewhere that my accent would have been seen as a novelty, like Australia or Greenland, and I could have gone to Africa and run about with my top off and had a laugh with the locals.
I could have helped fly planes round the Bermuda Triangle, build pyramids in Egypt or cycle the Great Wall of China for a charity of Geldof's choosing as long as it wasn't one of those charities that make you dress up as a clown or a schoolgirl because I'd be taking the cycle itself seriously.

But, you know what? I'm glad I didn't do any of those things. I'm glad I stayed here. Because I don't think there's a harder place in the world to become a Hero than right here in Dundee, what with the boo boys and the weather. It's not Dundee's fault that I'm not the Hero Of Dundee. It's my fault for not telling my story sooner. From Mum, Dad and Uncle Harry to Alf Whicker and the Merchant Navy, to the Great Skirt Hunt and the window cleaning, to the Cheeseburger Wars to the Annexe to fifty years of Frank. If there's been a better story than that I've yet to read it and, yes, I'm including the Bible and
Where Eagles Dare
. Now that I've told it, things are going to change round here. You'll see.

Thanks for reading. Unless you're standing holding it in the shop, in which case you're an absolute disgrace.

 

Your Servant,

 

Bob Servant.

_________________________

92
Sing, presumably.

My thanks to – Hugh and all at Birlinn, David and all at MBA, Michael Munro, The Writers Room of New York City, The Dundee Rep Theatre, Jim Gove, Allan Reoch, Liam Brennan, Doc Ferry's Bar, the Taychreggan Hotel, Mark's Burger Bar on the Dryburgh Industrial Estate (great cheeseburgers), family, friends and all Bob's pals around the world. Now, most importantly, to Bob Servant.

On the day I left Bob's house, the manuscript tucked under my arm and a monolithic weight lifted from my shoulders, I found him waiting in his garden. He was sitting in one of a pair of deckchairs facing the River Tay, a generous glass of OVD rum clutched in his hand. Bob had been unusually melancholy since ‘finishing the book' (as I have already described at embittered length in the Introduction, an optimistic phrase) and this final day was no exception. He patted the other deckchair and I sat down to a startling measure of rum and the question, ‘Did I tell you about the day I finally sold my cheeseburger vans?'

This was interesting. I'd heard whispers of this fateful day from others and the general feeling was that Bob had in some way humiliated himself. I was therefore unsurprised by its omission from his memoirs and was too distraught from my existing labours to request it. And yet, with my departure minutes away, Bob began.

He told me that he had, through invite and bribery, gathered a crowd at Broughty Ferry harbour to hear an address where he would ‘tell it like it is' in a wide-ranging speech that would have denigrated his perceived enemies in the council, local newspaper and the demonic Scottish Obesity Forum.

On the day itself, Bob related in a measured tone, such was the level of attendance that he elected to deliver the speech from the
roof of his prize van. Frank was behind the wheel and the plan was that when Bob finished his triumphant talk, Frank would ease the van away and Bob would wave goodbye while holding onto the large plastic cheeseburger that crested his van and had become such an icon in the city.

‘Frank, though, he . . .' Bob hesitated and shook his head with an ancient despair. ‘I'd told him to drive me slowly the whole way home so I could wave to people and make it clear that it wasn't goodbye it was
buenos dias
.'

‘
Au revoir
,' I prompted.

‘No thanks,' said Bob, cryptically, before continuing.

Sipping at his OVD, the deckchair creaking as he braced himself for the story's climax, Bob told me that there had been a signalling mix-up between Frank and himself. Boldy predicting that the end of his speech would spark such an ovation Frank would be unable to hear instructions, Bob had taken with him to the roof a tube of salad cream. Frank's signal to start the engine was to be a quick squirt of the condiment onto the van's windscreen.

Bob hesitated in his deckchair. He seemed momentarily unsettled, as if locked in internal debate as to whether to tell me the story's end. His head hung a little when he continued, the words were drawn with regret.

‘I'd only just started to speak, I hadn't even got to a joke,' he said, ‘when a seagull shat on the glass and Frank went off like Jackie Stewart.'

From there, Bob told me, matters became unnaturally traumatic. He spoke of gripping the plastic cheeseburger in the appropriate belief that his life depended on it, of his bunnet being plucked from his head and his sheepskin coat being lifted like a cape into the air.
⁹³

‘The Broughty Ferry Road was the worst,' he said. ‘Like a wind tunnel. Then the Grey Street crossing nearly took my head off. When I got back here I had to put my arms in ice. I didn't speak for two days, who could blame me?'

The question, I think, was rhetorical and either way it provoked an extended silence. I, as is often the case, was left pondering blankly the motivation in telling me the story until Bob offered a sighed
clarification. ‘That's what big goodbyes get you,' he said flatly, pointing at me. ‘You see?'

‘Yes,' I lied.

The roar of a toiling engine announced the arrival outside of Chappy Williams, Frank and Tommy Peanuts. Bob's three firmest companions had been at the local supermarket sourcing supplies for an evening's entertainment in the dramatic extension of Bob's house. They proceeded into the garden in fine spirits. Chappy, Bob's nemesis in a V-neck; Tommy, the Romantic lost to cycnicism; and Frank, the wide-eyed loyalist.

Frank looked at me in some alarm and exclaimed that there were ‘only four chickens' but Bob calmed him with the assurance that I was ‘on my way'. I obediently replaced my untouched drink, stood and said my farewells. Bob placed a warm hand on my shoulder which I took as a friendly touch before the force increased and I recognised it as more of a physical guide down his path. At the gate he said, ‘Well done,' so quickly and quietly that I nearly missed it, before clearing his throat for all of our attention and declaring, ‘Well, kiddo. Let me know if you're passing by.'

I reached for the gate and was pulling it open when he offered a final addition: ‘So I can draw the curtains.'

Bob, Chappy and Tommy laughed with impressive abandon as I offered a stoic smile and walked into the street. For the final time I began the march along Harbour View Road. The sun was dipping into the Tay; its light lay on the water in great sweeps of orange. From behind me, I heard Frank start to laugh as well.