Who’s Bob?

On n’est pas Bob à moitiè. That’s what it said on a beer-mat in a pub in Belgium. I wondered: Who’s Bob? Part of the answer was on the beer-mat itself: Un vrai Bob ne boit pas d’alcool. A Bob, I learnt, was somebody who had volunteered to drive his friends home from the pub and remain sober all night. Bob, who despite his name can be male or female, is offered a free soft drink in many pubs and is recognizable by a soft wristband which has Bob written on it. Though I did not know who Bob was, most people I asked did, especially younger people. Though Bob is now known in many other places, his origins are actually in Belgium, the country where I first met him.