Bob Servant by Bob Servant Page A

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 theonly 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 startedtalking 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