Customer Reviews
Making Spam Fun - By: Mark Baker, 22 Aug 2008 
With the internet age has come all kinds of wonderful new convinces we now rely on every day. But with every plus comes a minus, & for most of us that minus is spam. Every morning, I hate wading through the massive amount of e-mails I get that I'm not even interestedin reading.
One man decided to have some fun, however. And we get to share that fun because of this book. "Bob Servant" (and the observant person will pick up on that name faster than I did) decided to reply to some of his spam & see how long he could drag out the exchanges without the other side catching on or giving up. Here in, we get eight such exchanges & the results are hilarious.
Most of these e-mails start out all too familiar. There's the African native who needs Bob to get money out of the country. Theirs the Chinese company looking for a local personin Scotland to help with local payments. And there's Alexandria, who is more interestedin Scottish men than her native Russians.
But what follows is anything but routine. It's hard to describe just how great this book because half the fun is watching how the events unfold. Twice, Bob turns a job offer into a potential job for the spammer when he pretends to be interestedin buying a painting or a bunch of pots.
But my favorite exchanges cross the line into the absurd. Some of these involve wild animals & the postman. But that's all I'm going to say. Well, that & it reveals just how desperate the criminal spammers are to get the information they need. They are certainly persistent. And rather stupid themselves.
I've got to give the author credit. He has created a great world you real get involved in. In each exchange we get to see a different side of Bob & his friends. They provide half the fun.
While most of these exchanges are wonderful, I did think a couple went on too long. And they weren't quite the mostly clean stuff I normally enjoy reading. But that didn't dampen my enjoyment for long.
Ironically enough, I got this book because I replied to a spam e-mail from the author. And I'm glad I did. If you need a release from the constant attack of spam, this book is perfect for you.
The most laugh-out-loud hilarious little book I've ever read - By: Daniel Jolley, 16 Jun 2008 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 & flat-out run with it, & 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, & 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 muchin his elementin front of a keyboard as he is down at the local pub regaling anyone & everyone with his stories, schemes, & ideas. There's just no way I could adequately describe the likes of "Bob's" best mates Frank the Plank, Chappy Williams, & 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 arein 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 & 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 kingin Togo seeking help transferring a fortune from his home country into an American bank. "Bob" wants more than the standard cut & 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-bein 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 generalin Sierra Leone, etc. There are eight sets of genuine email correspondencein 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 alongin a long, long time, & Delete This At Your Peril is the funniest book I've read since I discovered The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy & 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, & light a candlein 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 - By: Peter Durward Harris, 29 May 2008 I've passed through Broughty Ferry many times on my way to & from my ancestral homelandin 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 & running a fleet of cheeseburger vans, but this book is devoted to an amusing sideline that he started after winning a computerin a raffle. I expect that even those who lostin 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 & the exchanges that followed them, editing where necessary to remove addresses (postal or email) & 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 & age). Each spammer gets their own chapterin this book, which also includes an introduction to Bob & 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 killedin an accidentin 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 homein 2008.
Bob responded to these emailsin 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 & other animals. In one of the other caes, Bob suggested setting up an African restaurantin 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 - By: Bawbag, 05 Dec 2007 Absolutely hilarious, a real hoot! Bobby Dazzler really has put one over on those cheeky scam artists & 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 & old Bobsterin at around 2000 or something. Put thatin your pipe & smoke it, Root!
Hilarious and addictive - By: Bruno Vincent, 23 Nov 2007 Like other reviewers here, I rarely laugh out loud at a book, but this made me do so several times. It's ticklish & addictive, & the hoops Bob makes the spammers jump through to try & get his money are absurd & wonderful. At one point Bob declares that he wants to be paidin lions & gets the spammer to send him photos of the lions he'll send. The photo exchange which ensues is very funny indeed.
