Delete This at Your Peril: The Bob Servant Emails

by Neil Forsyth

This is an hilarious collection of email exchanges starring the anti-hero of spam, Bob Servant, now republished with previously unreleased material.

Spam is the plague of the electronic age, comprising 90% of all emails sent and conning over £150m a year from British victims. 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.

Genres: Humor, Nonfiction, Comedy, Book Club, Scotland, Biography

208 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2007

About the author

Neil Forsyth was born in Scotland in 1978 and grew up in the much admired city of Dundee. His writing career began in books (a largely forgotten form of communication made famous by Jesus and, separately, Agatha Christie). He has written two novels, Let Them Come Through and San Carlos while Other People’s Money, the true story of the Scottish credit card fraudster Elliot Castro was released in seven countries and is being developed as a feature film.

Forsyth first created Bob Servant in a trilogy of books: Delete This At Your Peril – The Bob Servant Emails, Bob Servant – Hero Of Dundee and Why Me? The Very Important Emails of Bob Servant. Forsyth wrote a BBC Radio 4 adaptation - The Bob Servant Emails followed by the television series Bob Servant Independent for BBC4.

Forsyth is currently developing sitcoms with the BBC and a show with ABC/DreamWorks for American TV. In 2012, he memorably came third in the Dundee Evening Telegraph’s Spirit of Dundee competition, losing out to television presenter Lorraine Kelly and the Verdant Works Jute Museum.

Reviews

[Angus McKeogh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Irvine Welsh said this was one of the funniest books ever written. And it was funny. Sometimes I find humor very difficult to pull off in book form. And like I said, it was funny. One of the funniest books ever written. Perhaps. Maybe. Maybe not. I laughed. But as the book was written in the format of email exchanges between scammers and a Scottish bloke who was taking the piss in reply, I laughed, but the gag started to go stale after a while. Anyway, I’ll certainly try another Forsyth book in the future.

[ANnA · Rating 4 out of 5]

2 things I hate: bathrooms with no toilet paper, and spam emails.
Enter Bob Servant’s guilty pleasure...his Inbox...or should I say, treasure box— of scams, wit, laugh out loud humor, and extremely questionable characters.
Meet Russian lovers, Senegali detectives, and African princes.
It’s revenge, and it’s delicious.

[Carlos · Rating 4 out of 5]

En este libro, Bob Servant es un limpiaventanas escocés retirado que responde a los spammers con una mezcla de delirio y retranca. Aquí se seleccionan algunos intercambios de correo que van del surrealismo a la altísima comedia. No es ficción, o al menos no lo es en la mitad de los casos (la de los spammers) En este libro Bob es contactado por spammers de varios continentes para ofrecerle 2 trabajos en multinacionales asiáticas, 150 millones de libras en herencias no reclamadas, 3 esposas rusas y una exclusiva colección de arte de un artista maldito. Bob les devuelve ofertas para crear zoos de leones parlantes, restaurantes temáticos, entrevistas en periódicos locales y el amor. Y es imposible unir las líneas entre ambos conjuntos usando la lógica.

Neil Forsyth, humorista escocés, creó en 2007 a Bob para un programa de radio. Si alguna vez habéis conocido a un escocés de cierta edad notaréis que Bob es increíblemente verosímil, sobre todo en su humor. Aquí lo inverosímil es que al otro lado de un mensaje de spam haya alguien con tanta avaricia y poca fe en el ser humano como para seguirle el juego a Bob. Y más inverosímil todavía: que en algún caso les llegue a funcionar.

No he podido parar de reír o encajarme la boca incrédula en todo el libro. Tres capítulos me han llegado al alma. 'Lions, Gold & Confusion", "The hunt for Jeremy Jimjams" y "Bobby an Benjamin are new friends". En el primero, Bob renuncia a una herencia millonaria y negocia comprar a un principe africano 4 leones parlantes por 1.500 libras. En el segundo, Bob persigue a un spammer que le ha estafado 50.000 libras con la ayuda de un spammer que le quiere estafar 15.000, para entregarlo a las autoridades vestido de mujer (con un final más inesperado que el del más salvaje de los cuentos del Sr X). En el tercero, un spammer encuentra el amor con Bob y tiene momentos de ternura que harían las delicias de cualquier fan de Meg Ryan y un final a lo Neil Jordan.

Advertidos quedáis de que esto no es estrictamente más que un desopilante documento antropológico muy a tener en cuenta la próxima vez que os ofrezcan una mina de diamantes o Viagra.

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Laugh-out-loud (and I don't throw this term around) collection of the author's extended communication with internet spammers. Less of a book than a booklike object, but hilarious regardless.

[Anthony Buck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good fun, a little repetitive, occasionally inspired.

[Simon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read Delete This at Your Peril after it being recommended by someone who has appreciated my own recommendations and in the past had recommended some very funny books. So I was looking forward to the laughfest I was promised.

Delete This at Your Peril is a collection of emails between Bob Servant and the scammer of the chapter. They're either Millions, Russian Brides, Chinese Entrepreneur etc. scams. Each chapter is a new scammer getting his time wasted by Bob Servant. Bob Servant ise the alter-ego of Neil Forsyth who in the narrative book is merely the compiler of the emails. He talks of Bob in the footnotes as if he is another person. This I found tedious. And that's where the book fell down for me. I found Bob an idiot and his eccentricities mind-numbing.

I got onto 419eater.com many years ago which is a similar thing - a witty British guy wasting scammers time with funny emails and getting them to take ridiculous photos in the meantime. Perhaps that's why Delete This at Your Peril didn't feel very new to me. I'd already have my fill at 419eater.com. The Bob Servant character is the constant through the whole book so his backstory never changes. It's the same over and over again. There are a few chapters which are quite funny and have some witty exchanges but it didn't take long for me to get a little bored with the concept. 419eater.com does just that. Visit it and you'll see what I mean.

Email scamming is a sad part of society these days and there is nothing wrong with people wasting their time and doing it in a funny way but I just felt it had been done before. And done better.

[Nicky · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this up at the library because I needed something light, and the humour reminded me of my dad a bit. I can imagine him stringing along a scammer in this way, though I think he'd be more subtle and clever about it. It's amusing enough at first, in this case, but after a couple of exchanges I was skimming them all and shaking my head at the reductio ad absurdum of some of it.

I wouldn't buy this, but it might be worth a flick through if you're looking for something funny.

[Bea · Rating 5 out of 5]

So bloody funny! This kind of humor I don't normally find that amusing but this really tickled my funny bone! A good one to pick up and put down after a chapter, especially if you are having bad day and need a little something to cheer you up!

[Matthew Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Go today and find this book, but set aside an afternoon (it's a quick read) because you won't want to put it down. Hilarious! I had to leave the bookstore where I was reading because I was laughing embarrassingly loudly.

[Stuart Crowther · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came to this book after reading a tweet from some ex-rugby guy I follow. Great concept. I loved it. Again, a book to pick up whilst reading another. Well worth reading

[Jenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 because there were a couple of lines that did make me snort. It's creative, however it does get a bit repetitive and I skim read the last third. Probably best read a chapter at a time in between other things.

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious! An enjoyable way to while away a couple of hours

[Jared · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned absolutely nothing from this book. As a matter of fact, I actually feel dumber for having read it. But, that's the pure joy of it.

This guy who lives in Dundee, Scotland won a computer in a raffle. He got online and quickly discovered all sorts of spammers and scammers running wild. So, he replied to their emails and jerked their chains a little. The results are hilarious, as are the wild stories he weaves for the spammers.

This is the must read of the information age.

[Mills · Rating 2 out of 5]

Soz n'all but I shall be deleting this one. I had pretty high hopes for Delete This At Your Peril as the premise sounded hilarious. But quite frankly, the imaginary narrator Bob was an imbecile and, while vaguely humorous for a few pages, he swiftly became very tedious. If I had felt as though he was making these things up to mess with the recipients and did actually have a brain the book might not have seemed so poor. But alas, no brain for Bob. Very very low brow humour.

[Maxine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an hilarious read.

If you ever wanted to see someone get their own back on those loathsome individuals that like to scam money from the vulnerable, then this is the book for you.....Bob strikes back!

My only suggestion would be, don't read this all in one go, read a chapter , put it down and then read something else and then come back to it.

It would be a good book to keep in the loo!

[Holly · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was such a funny premise which didn't entirely deliver unfortunately. Some bits were really good (a highlight = an "american" using phrases like "what is up my man?") but most of it felt repetitive and I got bored of Bob's constant references to his burger van days.

It's a bit of a shame really because I did really want to like this more.

[Christine · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm afraid I did delete it.
Tedious and respective, and once I was about 1/3 through I found I didn't have the heart to continue.
My husband enjoyed it though, so not all lost!

[Dennis Littrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some full out belly laughs amid the delirious and delicious satire

A blurb on the cover from “MAXIM” exclaims “GENIUS! Highly entertaining and brilliantly deranged.” I wouldn’t go that far with the genius and brilliant part, but “Delete This at Your Peril” IS very funny and a bit deranged. I read the entire book in less than an hour, and although Servant is as long-winded at times as he is weird, I had some real laugh out loud moments.

The question is, does “Bob Servant,” putative author of this humor opus that makes fun of Internet spammers and scammers, really exist? Or is he the bizarre creation of “editor” Neil Forsyth who holds the copyright to the book?

Not that it matters. What Bob Servant (or Neil Forsyth) does—and this has been done before, see, for example, Black Hat: Misfits, Criminals, and Spammers in the Internet Age (2004) by John Biggs—is play along with the spammers as though he is some unsophisticated rube who is falling for the con. What makes the book so funny is how Servant is able to turn the tables on the 419 scam masters from Nigeria and elsewhere and rope them into a lengthy and fruitless email correspondence, while holding out the carrot of his actually going to the bank. Servant piles it on relentlessly with misdirections and pratfalls among and with his ne’er-do-well friends and acquaintances in Broughty Ferry, Scotland.

In the first chapter, there is a certain “His Royal Highnest, [sic] Jack Thompson…the only son of late King Arawi of tribal land” who is seeking “a foreign partner” to transfer “$75m” to, “for investment,” to whom he will pay 20% of the proceeds.

Bob Servant fires back with “Good morning your Majesty, I want 30%, and not a penny less.”

After a bit of pulling line, Servant declares that he wants the money in lions, and he wants pictures of the lions. Thompson sends him a photo of four identical gold lions, but Servant is not satisfied. He writes, “There appears to have been a slight misunderstanding my friend, I was expecting four live lions, not gold ones.”

So Jack Thompson replies, “I am buying four male lions from my friends private zoo and he has also arranged for shipment to Scotland.” Thompson attaches a photo of a lion! But this isn’t enough. Servant wants the lions to be able to talk. After some discussion of what the lions might be able to say, Thompson assures Servant that one of the lions can talk. Meanwhile Servant is pretending to get the funds ready to send via Western Union to Thompson. But then Servant decides he (and his buddy “Frank Theplank”) also want “2 leopards, 1 elephant, 1 alligator, 2 parrots, 1 hedgehog.”

At some point Thompson begins to shout: “BOB LETS GO STRAIGHT TO THE POINT. THE LIONS AND LEOPARDS ARE HERE WITH ME AT THE BACK OF MY HOUSE THEY ARE FRIENDLY AND ONE OF THE LION TALKS. BOB SEND ME THE £1700 SO I CAN COLLECT THAT MONEY AND SHIP THEM TO YOU.”

Bob Servant replies by asking “What are the names of the lions?” and “What does the lion say when it talks? The bank is preparing me some forms.”

To a Russian babe named Alexandra who wants to find a husband, Servant writes, “What a fantastic photo. My God, what a pair of bazookas…” She responds in part with “I do not like Russian men, their attitude to women. I want to love and be loved. Unfortunately, I have not found that in the country. I am gentle women but I am a tiger when I am in love!”

At length Servant sends Alexandra a photo of himself holding a very large, bloated carp. (Well, not himself but some old guy, whom Alex deigns to find interesting, although I don’t think she got the symbolic intent of the caught fish.) Bob regales her with tales of life at Broughty Ferry with his buds, Chappy Williams and the regulars at Stewpot’s Bar. And on and on and on. Finally in utter frustration (ha, ha, ha) Alexander fumes, “F-you!. To me has bothered to read your delirium.”

Ah, such sweet revenge! Bob Servant has done a right bloody good turn for all of us in keeping these con artists at bay and wasting their time.

There are seven more tales in the book. One wishes there were a few more. Bottom line on the old laugh-o-meter: five stars.

--Dennis Littrell, author of the mystery novel, “Teddy and Teri”

[Amita Shukla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have you ever wondered what would it be like to reply to that Nigerian prince asking for your help to transfer his million-dollar funds? What if there was an actual Nigerian prince and you just missed your opportunity? Unfortunately, I was educated enough to identify them as scams.
But Bob Servant here had too much time after he shut down his window cleaning business, and he decided to take up this task on behalf of all of us.

To get a glimpse of what this book contains, one must watch this ted talk.

This one-of-a-kind book is hilarious, with Bob Servant writing super personal notes to scammers, and the scammers replying in desperation to extract a single penny out of him. Thanks to the author Neil Forsyth for providing footnotes clarifying the claims made by Bob Servant and helping me demarcate between fiction and reality of Bob Servant's world.

There were a few laugh out loud moments. The mails were purposefully written so that they waste the time of the scammer, and hence were too long, which made me fall asleep at times. Hence the 4 stars.

[Nazia Nasir · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is about the various mails exchanged between spammers and Bob Servant, an eccentric old-man who has nothing better to do. This is a very repeated concept of getting a few laughs, though the premises developed by the protagonist are hilarious in parts. This is like an extended joke book, where one can read one chapter at a time (i.e., one email conversation), have a good laugh, and put it down and return back to it again when wanting to read a short no-brainer again.

What worked for me: The simplicity of the book and that it can be read out to a group of people to get laughs.

What didn't work for me: The concept is very run-of-the-mills.

I would not suggest buying this book as I am sure you can get many such spammer stories off the internet.

[Kristaps · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is a compilation of e-mails between spammers and one hell of a character named Bob. Interesting premise, few giggles here and there. Noone likes spammers so when someone actually takes the time none of us have to answer them, you can get some quite amusing "stories". However this all e-mail exchange thing went a bit dull towards the end. It's not a particularly bad read, you can definitely read this while doing your thing on the white throne, however you wont roll on the floor laughing. Just some fun bits and thats it.

[David Day · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very funny and well written. It influenced me to go and watch the BBC series, which is not as good as the book.

However, if you wish to have a chuckle, a guffaw and a titter, then this provides with you that in spades.

A witty yarn of one man’s crusade to empty his in box of fluff, non-sensica, and adverts for penis enlargements!

Upon perusal, your countenance will betoken inner peace and eudemonia!

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing. Unlimited stars from me. Bob "Godzilla" Servant is my spirit animal. This man needs to be knighted straight away. Yes sometimes the emails can be repeatable but there is always a twist at the end. A legend in my eyes, a book I will pick up every year to reread. Pick up this book now, if you don't laugh in the first few pages then you are dead inside and you shouldn't reproduce cause the world doesnt need any more people like you. Long live Bob, he has changed my life for the good.

[Kirsty Farmer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm being harsh, I really couldn't get into this book. When I picked it up in a charity shop, I thought it would be funny - it was for the first couple of stories. The main issue I found, it was repetitive! Too many of the same type of correspondence. The responses from Bob were witty in places, but they did go on a little.

[Laura Leilani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Man answers phishing emails: Russian brides; African gold; get rich quick offers. I like this type of thing, messing around with these crooks, but Neil does it in such odd ways. For example when answering an African email offering millions in gold he said he wasn’t interested in the gold but could they sell him a lion and the back and forth negotiations are just ridiculous. Very fun read.

[Bab · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got into this without prior advice, thinking it was non-fiction, and I could have died, gasping for air.
The brazen, shameless hilarity!!!

It's marginally less funny when you realize it's a work of fiction, but most especially, it's a terrible shame that all this correspondence didn't actually take place. Makes you wish for a better world, and makes you consider maybe creating it yourself...

[Ian Pindar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this, it is funny light read, this was one of my, 'before I go to sleep reads'.

I read it as 'The Timewaster Letters' is my favourite comedy book of all time. This is not as good as that, as James sang, 'if I had not seen such riches, I could live with being poor'.

Read 'Timewasters', second, and you will be more enthusiastic and taken with 'Delete at your own peril'.

Ian M Pindar

[Andrew Ferenbach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply hilarious revenge on Email spammers

Through the ingenious comic creation that is Bob Servant he leads scammers a merry dance which never ends in them getting their payoff (but not for want of them trying).

The book is extra funny as I currently live in Dundee and it is set there

[D Murgatroyd · Rating 1 out of 5]

The premise of this book is great however I can't recommend it as it is full of swearing and grubbiness and repetition. The first couple of pages were great and I checked it out thinking it would be a good laugh but after that it was a skim read that revealed all of the above issues.

[James Russell · Rating 2 out of 5]

A brilliant premise for a book and very funny in parts. The humour does get a bit repetitive as Bob Servant takes the mickey out of spammers from different parts of the globe. I’d recommend it, it’s a quick read and original.