Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #129848 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-01
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

Martin Kelner, The Guardian
`Hilarious. I laughed so much I nearly gave him my account number'

Maxim
'Genius! Highly entertaining and brilliantly deranged'

Synopsis
This is a hilarious collection of email exchanges starring the anti-hero of spam, Bob Servant. Spam is the plague of the electronic age. It comprises 90 per cent of all emails and GBP150 million was conned from Britons in 2006 alone. Into this wave of corruption steps the brave figure of Bob Servant - a former window cleaner and cheeseburger magnate with a love of wine, women and song as well as a keen sense of fair play. This wickedly funny and original book features the anarchic exchanges between Bob and the hapless spam merchants. As they offer Bob lost African millions, Russian brides and get-rich-quick scams he responds by generously offering some outlandish schemes of his own. The spammers may have breached his firewall, but they have met their match as Bob Servant rises heroically to the challenge, and sows confusion in his wake.

Customer Reviews

The most laugh-out-loud hilarious little book I've ever read
Have you ever been tempted to respond to any of the ridiculous scam messages that flood your inbox on a daily basis, just to see what kind of response you get back or to see how far you can take the discussion before blowing the spammer off? Well, one man has taken that idea and flat-out run with it, and you won't believe the results. If ever there were a true character on this earth, it has to be "Bob Godzilla Servant," former window cleaner (until some gypsies stole his ladders, but don't get him started on that again), veteran of Dundee's Infamous Cheeseburger Wars of 1988-89, all-around man about town, gifted tall tale teller, and now a hero for the twenty-first century. Not only can he vanquish spammers with one hand tied behind his back, he's even capable of leaving at least one of them laughing about the whole thing.

"Bob Servant" is unique, which makes it impossible for me to communicate just how funny this book is. He is as much in his element in front of a keyboard as he is down at the local pub regaling anyone and everyone with his stories, schemes, and ideas. There's just no way I could adequately describe the likes of "Bob's" best mates Frank the Plank, Chappy Williams, and Tommy Peanuts, let alone "Bob" himself, to you here, nor could I even begin to do justice to the halcyon days when "Bob" dominated the cheeseburger van market. Even if I could, it wouldn't be right for me to do so. You are in good hands with journalist Neil Forsyth, who tells you everything you need to know (and then some) about his good friend "Bob's" extraordinary life and times.

Fittingly, the fun begins with the original standard bearer of spam, the old 419 (better known as the "Nigerian" scam). In this case, it's the son of a dead tribal king in Togo seeking help transferring a fortune from his home country into an American bank. "Bob" wants more than the standard cut and ends up getting his African friend promising to deliver talking lions as payment. The guy who offers him a wonderful textile distribution opportunity ends up advising "Bob" on the legal problems he faces after kidnapping his postman. Then he's wooing his new Russian wife-to-be in his own unique way (it involves an ostrich), turning another 409 scammer into the primary advisor to the ultra-realistic African restaurant he plans to open, starting an online love affair (pretending to be a woman, of course) with the son of a dead general in Sierra Leone, etc. There are eight sets of genuine email correspondence in all, each one of them as hilarious as the next.

Frankly, I can't even begin to describe just how entertaining every single page of this book is. "Bob Servant" is the best character to come along in a long, long time, and Delete This At Your Peril is the funniest book I've read since I discovered The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Red Dwarf many years ago. Heck, this might actually be the funniest book I've ever read, period. You won't just enjoy reading this book; you'll want to tell your co-workers about it, buy it as a gift for friends, and light a candle in hopes that "Bob Servant" will someday regale us with more stories or - even better - pen an autobiography of his exceptional life.

Revenge on the spammers - hilarious
I've passed through Broughty Ferry many times on my way to and from my ancestral homeland in Montrose, but apart from remembering the name, I've never really given the place much thought. Nevertheless, it is clear that within Broughty Ferry there live some highly entertaining characters, none more so than Bob Servant, the author of this book. He seems to have had a variety of jobs including window cleaning and running a fleet of cheeseburger vans, but this book is devoted to an amusing sideline that he started after winning a computer in a raffle. I expect that even those who lost in that raffle will be glad that Bob won if they read this book.

Bob soon discovered spam email as we all do, but he chose to take the spammers on at their own game. Eventually, he showed a long-time friend, journalist Neil Forsyth, what he'd been up to. Neil immediately recognized the potential for a book and, with Bob's agreement, set about assembling it. He picked out eight of the spammers and the exchanges that followed them, editing where necessary to remove addresses (postal or email) and providing footnotes as necessary to point out various untruths. He left all the swear words in, so you'd be best to avoid this book if they upset you (surely not, in this day and age). Each spammer gets their own chapter in this book, which also includes an introduction to Bob and a brief overview of spam, both written by Neil.

The cases allegedly concern, respectively, an Afican prince whose tribal king father had just died. a British man killed in an accident in Nigeria, an artist having problems with the way he is paid for his work, a belt manufacturer seeking British agents, an African military general whose father has died and, finally, an organization extracting material from Africa seeking representatives. I'm guessing that these scenaricastos are familiar to many people who do not have adequate firewalls on their computer. I saw (and deleted without further action) some of those when I had my first spell of being online from home. I have not seen them when using library computers, internet cafes or since re-connecting to the internet from home in 2008.

Bob responded to these emails in ways that the senders could never have anticipated. In the first case, he responded by demanding more than he was offered, progressing to ever more ludicrous demands. He didn't want cash, preferring lions and other animals. In one of the other caes, Bob suggested setting up an African restaurant in Scotland. In the artist's case, Bob chooses to commision a painting instead of helping directly with the artist's finances. In all cases, Bob avoided giving any of the original senders what they want, content to string them along until either he realized that it was time to finish the exchange or they gave up on him.

Bob's wicked sense of humor makes this a higely entertaining book. Maybe he will inspire others to take revenge on the spammers too, but very few would be as putrageously funny as Bob. Will there be a second volume? I don't know, but I suspect that if this book is the success that it deserves to be, the spammers will blacklist Bob so his source of material will dry up. He could then set up an email account with a different identity but if he does that, he may become the first person ever to change his identity to ensure that he receives spam.

Yes, this is a hilarious book that anybody who has ever been spammed can enjoy.

Bob, you're a beautiful, beautiful man
Absolutely hilarious, a real hoot! Bobby Dazzler really has put one over on those cheeky scam artists and how! There's a lot of comparisons to the Henry Root letters - however a quick look at the amazon rankings reveals Henry Root at 750000 and old Bobster in at around 2000 or something. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Root!