c THE GUIDE TO HALLOWE’EN
Bob, Hallowe’en approaches and the kids want all sorts of outfits and pricey gifts. In my day it was dooking for apples and maybe a toffee apple if we were lucky. When did it all become so commercial? Alan Alan, It became commercial in 1973 when Stewpot’s Bar in Dundee announced there would be a £5 prize in their Hallowe’en Apple Dooking contest. Things got totally out of hand. My neighbour Frank borrowed a diving costume from his cousin who works offshore, spent a week practising in his bath and ended up getting ‘the bends’. It was one of the worst cases of ‘the bends’ ever seen in Dundee, and by far the worst that was picked up inside a house. On Hallowe’en, Slim Smith went down on the bucket like the plane in Dambusters and took out about ten apples at once. To be fair, it was an impressive sight. His mouth opened like the loading end of a roll on-roll off ferry. Your Servant, Bob Servant
Avoiding a zombie attack? Try a ‘saucy look’.
BOB SERVANT’S HOW TO SURVIVE HALLOWE’EN The List’s resident agony uncle shines his answer light on your dark questions
Bob, My pal’s having a Hallowe’en party in Glasgow. Any ideas for a scary costume that won’t cost the Earth and will maybe attract a bit of attention from your much-loved ‘skirt’? Richard C Hi Bob, I used to love Hallowe’en until I started watching zombie movies, now it leaves me terrified. If I was to encounter a zombie, how would I go about tackling it? Carol
Richard, I think it was Dean Martin who said that Hallowe’en is a bastard of a night for finding decent skirt. To stand out at a Hallowe’en party and get the skirts’ attention you need to have a scary outfit, but then to get involved with the skirt they have to be prepared to entertain a man dressed like Jack the Ripper or such. Really you’re looking for skirts who are hopelessly attracted to danger. Try traffic wardens, members of the Territorial Army or that bird from Murder She Wrote. Yours, Bob Carol, First of all, I should clarify that I’ve never met a zombie but that doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion. Put it this way, I’ve never met the Prime Minister, but I know I wouldn’t want to go to the waterslides with him. With zombies the key is to unsettle them. If you bump into one on Hallowe’en then immediately produce a saucy, ‘anything’s possible’ look, similar to those you used to get a lot of in the Carry On films and from fellow passengers in the early days in Intercity trains. That should scare them off. Yours, Bob
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Why Me? The Very Important Emails of Bob Servant is published by Birlinn on Tue 1 Nov. Bob will return to his usual agony uncle column next issue. 18 THE LIST 20 Oct–17 Nov 2011
LIMMY’S HORRIBLE YOUTUBE CLIPS
Glasgow’s foremost internet obsessive picks his favourite terrifying videos
INDIAN THRILLER You are the creator
of the Indian
Thriller. Time and money have been
spent on costumes, make up, design, choreography, filming, everything. Only
for you to realise in the edit, when it’s all too late, that MJ turned into a zombie at
the dancing bit, not a werewolf. bit.ly/indianthriller
BABY RONALD MCDONALD
Picture, if you will,
you are sitting in McDonald’s with
your six-month-old baby. You need to nip to the toilet. Your baby will be OK waiting
in the high chair, you’ll only be a minute.
You return from the toilet. In the high
chair is this (pictured above). bit.ly/babyronald
SCARY MAZE A boy has caused
the accidental death of his grandmother.
It was a fire. The
family will never forgive and will never forget. And, by surprising him every so
often with a photo from the post mortem,
they’ll never let him forget either.
bit.ly/scarymaze
HALLOWEEN III The year is 1982.
The film is
Halloween III. The scene is that bit
where you find out what the masks do when somebody watches the Silver
Shamrock advert. The horror. The horror of realising that this is fuck all to do with
Michael Myers. bit.ly/halloweenIII
SO WHAT
Imagine that this is George Michael.
Imagine you disagreed, and
looked up images to prove it, but you were wrong. You try to convince people
that this guy is different, but nobody knows what you are talking about.
Imagine that, if you dare. bit.ly/sowhatlucky