Bob Servant by Bob Servant Page B

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.

20
Bringing Cruncher On Board
    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.
    â€˜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.
    Right from the start having Cruncher on the round was top class. He wore his donkey jacket and