Bob Servant (15 page)

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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'.

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 arrogant
⁶⁷
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 cock
⁶⁸
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 better
⁶⁹
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'.

It was a complete overreaction, as if someone had pressed a switch marked Make Everyone Lose Their Marbles. I remember a few years later when Princess Diana died and there was a similar situation. I was watching the news with all the flowers and the hysteria and I shook my head and smiled sadly and said, ‘Me and you, princess,' and Frank said, ‘Me and you what?' and I had to give him a three-day ban from my house.

The end was in sight and a matter of weeks after the TV show cheeseburger vans were finally banned in Dundee. The Cheeseburgers Wars were over and like all good wars they ended with a party. Me and all the other van owners met at Broughty Ferry harbour, poured away the rest of our oil which made the most beautiful patterns on the water,
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and then went by convoy to my house. Stewpot brought round a few kegs and things took off. It was a fantastic party with a great atmosphere and a lot of End Of An Era hugs and Best Days Of Our Lives back slaps. Late at night, with the music going and everyone dancing I looked round my house and realised two things. I was a King. But I was a King without a Palace.

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66
See pages 1–14 of
The Dundee Courier
, 19 July 1988 – ‘
The Courier Takes a Stand
. (Cheeseburger Catastrophe . . . obesity levels . . . mass truancy . . . the return of scurvy . . . a once proud city . . . laughing stock of the world.)'.

67
See
The Dundee Courier
, various articles August 1988–August 1990 – (‘Storm in a teacup . . . Piss off back to London . . . Cheeseburgers are healthier than bananas . . . Why don't you people go and chase proper criminals? . . . We're bigger than Jesus.)'.

68
Finger, presumably.

69
On 8 August 1990 Bob Servant appeared on Grampian Television's
North Tonight Special Report
entitled ‘Cheese Burger or Cheese Murder?' I've got hold of the footage and it's spectacular. The other guests were a local doctor and a member of the Scottish Obesity Forum. The debate lasted just short of three minutes during which time Bob accused the Scottish Obesity Forum of being both Communists and ‘perverts', accused the doctor of being ‘knee deep in bungs from the Fish and Chips mob' and then angrily suggested that the show's presenter (who had yet to speak) was ‘putting words in my mouth'. Bob walked off the set, only to reappear twenty seconds later to ask who he should speak to ‘about expenses', at which point the show was replaced without warning by an old edition of
Sheepdog Trials
.

70
See
The Scotsman
4 September 1990 – ‘
Dundee RSPCA Investigating Swan “Armageddon”
. (“I wasn't in the Falklands,” said passer-by Arthur Justice, 68, “but I'd imagine it looked exactly like this.”)'.

When I first bought the house that would become Bob's Palace it was already a very decent pad. It was nicer than Frank's for a start. Sometimes Frank and I will sit at mine and I'll say, ‘Here, Frank, isn't it funny to think that even before I did all the work my house was nicer than yours?' and he'll kind of mutter and grumble and I'll say, ‘Did you hear me OK, Frank? I was just saying that isn't it funny to think that even before I did all the work my house was nicer than yours?' and he'll sort of look straight ahead and start blinking really fast and I'll say, ‘Sorry, Frank, I'm not sure if you're picking this up or not, I'm just saying that isn't it funny to think that even before I did all the work my house was nicer than yours?' and Frank will stand up and walk home really, really slowly.

When I bought the house it looked like this –

These days it looks like this –

I know what you're doing. You're looking at the Anything Goes Annexe and it's up with your eyebrows. Well, I can't blame you and if you really knew what you were dealing with then you'd be peeling your eyebrows off the ceiling. Take your wildest dreams, mix in Sauce, sprinkle it with Excitement and then boil it in a saucepan marked No Rules while wearing an apron made of Danger. You're getting close.

The Anything Goes Annexe took a year and a good few quid to build (although I used pals so we didn't have to pay Kriss Akabusi)
⁷¹
but it was worth the wait because it's got the lot. Leather seats, a big telly, paintings of women on motorbikes, paintings of motorbikes on women, china dogs, wooden birds, mirrors in surprising places, doors in surprising places and a Hi-fias powerful as a speedboat.

More important than any of that is the atmosphere. The Anything Goes Annexe has the best atmosphere of any room I've ever been in and that includes when the boy at the Eagle Bar put on Laughing Gas Mondays.
⁷²
When I think of some of the scenes I've witnessed in the Anything Goes Annexe I find myself blushing. They're not
memories a Dundee man should have, they're the kind of things you'd expect to hear in anecdotes from George Best, Olly Reed or Forrest Whitaker.