Bob Servant (6 page)

I found Stewpot's bar in the summer of 1963. Sometimes Frank says he found it, which is laughable. We were seventeen at the time and a few months off being legal so you had to pick and choose your boozers quite carefully. I would have been OK on my own – I was six feet tall and walked like Errol Flynn – but Frank looked like he should still be in shorts and the tragedy is that he often was.

It's not that we didn't have money for better clothes. Between us we were doing four paper rounds, which sounds impossible but not with the system that I put in. Frank went and did the paper rounds and I waited for him to come home and then collected the money, did the accounts and advised him on any problems he might have encountered that morning.

Sometimes Frank would complain about doing all the legwork and I'd be very patient and explain again the meaning of the phrase ‘horses for courses'. If he kept going with the Woe Is Me stuff then I'd point out that he did more paper rounds than anyone in Dundee, he was the paper-round champion, and if turning someone into a champion was a bad thing then someone should tell the boy that trains Cassius Clay to close the gym.

On a Friday night we'd usually head to the Cuckoo's Nest pub on the Claypotts Roundabout. It wasn't exactly Las Vegas down there – it was bloody dangerous to get to for a start
²³
– but we could always
get served because the Cuckoo's Nest barman Terry Devine had fallen out with a chip pan and could only just see out of one eye. Me and Frank put on deep voices, which was a lot harder for him than me, and we got served every time. Getting your drink could take a while if the place was busy but it was a good atmosphere with Terry feeling his way along the optics and everyone giving it the ‘warmer, colder' routine.

But Frank and I wanted somewhere a bit more happening and, to be honest with you, with a better level of skirt. For the first few years after it opened the Claypotts roundabout was unbelievably busy because of the novelty factor
²⁴
and it was impossible for any skirt wearing heels to beat the traffic. The women that made it to the Cuckoo's Nest were largely women who were addicted to danger and although women like that are good to talk to (or listen to in the case of Tina Turner) they're not usually relationship material.

We'd heard of Stewpot's, of course, it was a big name back then on the pub scene just like it is today. I knew my dad used to drink there and that the owner had named if after his son, so one Friday night we were leaving the house for the Cuckoo's Nest when I said, ‘Forget the Cuckoo's Nest, Frank, we're going to Stewpot's.' His face went like tomato ketchup and he said we'd never get in but using my eyes I told him not to worry.

We went past Safeways, through the Long Lane and up past Toshy's Hardware. You could hear the laughter from fifty yards away. We walked in and there we were – me and Frank standing in Stewpot's for the very first time. I'll never forget the landlord's words. He said, ‘Have you two lost your football or something?' and that was the first time that men laughed with me in Stewpot's bar.

Unfortunately Frank missed the fact that we were involved in a joke with the landlord and started saying that he had lost his ball in Dawson Park and if it had shown up in Stewpot's then he was willing to take it back without any questions being asked and on and on even though I was giving him a look that said ‘stop talking immediately'.

The landlord was about to chuck us out, and I couldn't blame him, when I said how I thought my dad used to drink there and said his name and the landlord and the others all looked happy and said what a good guy he was and was I the kid with the pony? I said that maybe that was someone from Dad's other family and they all kind of looked at their drinks and the landlord went nervous and said we could come in any time and why didn't we meet his son? Then he shouted ‘Stewpot' and over came this lad with a nice face.

Stewpot was the same age as us but even then he carried himself very differently. Like any great diplomat – your Ghandis, Mandelas, your Lynams – Stewpot has a manner about him that relaxes people and takes the sting out of the situation. I've always said that if anyone from the Ferry took hostages and held off police in an armed siege then I would want Stewpot sent in as the lead negotiator.

(Unfortunately I've never had the chance for that theory to be tested but I have high hopes for a guy who works at Safeways. He's in the Territorial Army and he's always angry. I've heard him swearing at the vegetable section, really laying into them on a personal level, and once caught him beating up a trolley in the car park. ‘Must make you feel like taking a few hostages?' I said hopefully to him that day in the car park but he pretended not to know what I was saying. It would be nice to know if taking hostages at least featured in the guy's plans but it's a hard thing to bring up. I suppose taking hostages is something that people do at very short notice for security reasons so I'll just have to wait and see if it pans out or not. But if the guy from Safeways does take hostages, and as I said it's not guaranteed, I have absolutely no doubt that it should be Stewpot sent in to negotiate, with me offering support and Frank locked in his house.)

Having said all that, just because he's my tip as a hostage negotiator doesn't mean I think that Stewpot's perfect – far from it. He didn't exactly get much of a handle on my Gin Crisis, which we'll come to, and I suppose if we're going to nitpick then we'd point out Stewpot sold me a fair portion of the gin but that's business and when I had the cheeseburger vans I sold Slim Smith more burgers than I care to remember and that was after he'd given up stairs. Not only is Stewpot a businessman, though, he's also a bloody good one. He's got the timeshare in Pitlochry, the Sierra and more nice jumpers than anyone I know. He doesn't flaunt his money which, being a self-made man myself (with a lot of money), I very much respect.

The only time I've ever seen Stewpot flustered was when Frank's nephew showed him that thing on the Internet
²⁵
and Stewpot went shaky, called them ‘faceless cowards', stormed down to the cellar and, rumour has it, kicked the living daylights out of a sack of lemons.

All in all, Stewpot is one of life's diamonds and I've had forty-seven years of good times in his pub (his dad gave him Stewpot's for his 21st birthday and went off to run a bed and breakfast in Carnoustie that I would infamously attack with an airgun during The Gin Crisis) but even then I must admit there's days when I wonder if Stewpot's bar is one of the reasons I've not made the big time. Going there pretty much every day all these years must have cost me a bit of time if you add it up and there's no-one who goes to Stewpot's every day that's really made it at an international level.

On the other side of the coin I've got great memories of the place and I suppose I've made some alright pals from going there. But on the other side of the coin
²⁶
I could argue that those forty-seven years have boiled down to forty-seven years' worth of stupid jokes from Chappy Williams, Tommy Peanuts moaning about Sally Peanuts and Frank asking Stewpot if there's ‘any surprises on the sandwich menu'.

Still, back in 1963 we were pleased enough to find it and we celebrated Frank's 18th birthday there shortly after. Not that he remembered.

Frank's 18th Birthday
²⁷

_________________________

23
See
The Dundee Courier,
17 January 1963 – ‘
Pub Marooned On City's First Roundabout
(Dundee City Council's Planning Committee today denied that there had been “serious gaps” in their knowledge of the country's new roundabout system.)'.

24
See
The Dundee Courier
, 26 March 1963 – ‘
Inverness Couple Delighted With Roundabout Trip
(“. . . everything we hoped for and more . . . it's like being on the moon.”)'.

25
See TripAdvisor.com's sparse Dundee section for an April 2004 review written by
Dusseldorf1976
entitled
The Worst Day Of Our Lives Yet!
(‘We thought that this place was a traditional Scottish cafeteria but this was not the case. The people were not like people that we expect to ever meet again. The men were angry and had faces red not from the sun and shouted even when they stood close. There were not any women we do not think.')

26
I hope Bob has kept this physics-defying coin in a safe place.

27
Photo courtesy of Bob Servant's private collection, all rights reserved. Inscription on back of photograph reads: ‘Frank ruins his own 18th birthday party, 1963.'

I remember the first time I met Chappy Williams very well. He walked into Stewpot's wearing a golf jumper and looking like he owned the place and me and Frank sat there and thought, ‘Look at this prick.' And you know what? Nearly fifty years later, if you were to come down Stewpot's bar, you'd find Chappy walking in there wearing a golf jumper and looking like he owns the place and me and Frank sitting there thinking, ‘Look at this prick.'

Chappy was fairly well known at the time because he was a champion schoolboy golfer so he was always in the paper holding up trophies and doing the old Look At Me routine. We spoke to him a bit that night and to be fair he wasn't too bad with the talking and the jokes and from then on we'd always have a bit of a To And Fro when he came in. That's not to say he wasn't a pain in the arse from the start. He'd practise his swing at the urinals which was both annoying and dangerous and when you shook his hand he'd say things like ‘Don't steal my grip' or ‘You're crushing the moneymaker'.

Because of that nonsense I wasn't too bothered when Chappy's golfing career came to a sudden halt, though I have to say I did feel sorry for him on a man-to-man level. He got to the final of the Scottish Amateur Open and whoever wins that usually flies into the professional game. But around the world there can't be more than a handful of golfers who have seen their whole career crumble in front of their eyes because of Tony Jacklin farting and Chappy was just unlucky to be one of them.
²⁸

After the Jacklin incident Chappy became the professional at Broughty Ferry Golf Club and he was there for forty years until his retirement.
²⁹
Well, there and in Stewpot's by three o'clock every afternoon. We've had a few ups and down over the years but all in all I suppose Chappy's a pal.

Unlike Chappy Williams, Tommy Peanuts has never really been any trouble at all. He was already with Sally when he started coming into Stewpot's and the two of them were an OK couple. He didn't try and act like he was Burt Lancaster just because he'd got a girlfriend like some guys do and back then he'd just started at the insurance company and he was OK about talking about that as well.

It was in the early 1980s that myself, Frank and Chappy had to have a bit of a chat with Tommy after he'd got a few promotions and made the mistake that people who work in offices sometimes make when they think that you would like to hear what they do when they're in the offices. You'd ask him how he was getting on and he'd start telling us about things that had happened in his office, and meetings he'd had when he'd had to ‘shake things up' or that he was ‘having a problem with the Johnston account' and me, Frank and Chappy looked at each other and thought, ‘Is he having a fucking laugh?' In the end we sat him down and said we were happy he'd got his promotions and so on but he should only really talk about stuff that happened in his office to other people in his office. And, to be fair to Tommy, he held his hands up and agreed. That's the only problem we've ever had with Tommy but back in the sixties he was great and he and Sally were good fun. For Frank, Chappy and myself, seeing those two together probably helped kick off The Great Skirt Hunt.

_________________________

28
See
The Dundee Courier
, 8 September 1966 – ‘
Chaos Reigns At The Scottish Amateur Open
(The Scottish Amateur Open was thrown into disarray yesterday when the nation's two leading youth hopes, Dundee's Chappy Williams and Edinburgh's Tony Jacklin were locked in a bitter feud. As officials tried to regain control Williams could be heard accusing Jacklin of an unorthodox distraction tactic as Williams attempted a vital putt. “He knew exactly what he was doing,” said Williams (20) last night. “It was a low, controlled noise. Like a trumpet. I hope he's happy with himself.” Jacklin said the accusation was “ludicrous” and added, “Things happen on a golf course, just like things happen in life.”)'.

29
See
The Dundee Courier
, 3 December 2006 – ‘
Retiring Broughty Golfing Legend Offers Olive Branch To Jacklin
(“I'd like to thank all the members for forty wonderful years . . . It still hurts, there's no doubt about that and it's probably gone on too long. Pick up the phone, Tony.”).