impsTALK | Great Service Stations of the Nation

The relationship between Boston United and motorway service stations is a long and complicated one. A bit like Kevin Keegan’s relationship with lay-bys and baseball bats, a scurrilous mischief-maker might say.

After all, for many years during Steve Evans’ reign as manager and de facto chairman, Boston United’s HQ was effectively either a hotel room or a car-boot in one of the nation’s roadside eateries; an office sometimes staffed by bruising heavyweights posing as Jim Dick’s brother, sometimes by hysterical Scottish maniacs, yet always frequented by the biggest names in world football – Pele, Maradona, Zidane, Darren Anderton to name but four.

But for the average fan not seeking to intimidate a witness to acts of serious, systematic financial misconduct, the relationship with service stations is far simpler. It basically boils down to a requirement for facilities that will cater for two basic human needs: eating and defecating. Unless you’re Stan Collymore, in which case you can add a third basic human need [Watch it – impsTALK Lawyer].

Some cater to these needs very well, others less so. Some even manage to go above and beyond the call of duty and provide things like running water and food free from e-coli. So here, in our all-new feature, impsTALK begins an irregular survey of the nation’s best and worst service stations, including some old classics and some lesser-known names in the world of transportational nutrition.

Have you got a particular favourite service station you’d like to see feature on these pages? Then e-mail impsTALK with ‘YES! I’VE PAID £58.99 FOR A DEEP FILL EGG AND BACON GINSTERS SANDWICH TOO!’ in the subject line, and we’ll either follow it up or ignore you and pretend your e-mail ended up in our spam filter in ‘error’.

#1 - Leicester Forest East
In which impsTALK tenuously shoehorns in a clumsy reference to Mars, before briefly mentioning the actual service station in question.... MORE

#2 - Tebay
In which impsTALK makes some rather fanciful claims about the West Coast Mainline and prints some outrageous comments about Workington before briefly mentioning the actual service station in question.... MORE

#3 - Keele
In which impsTALK spends ages slating Stoke before briefly mentioning the actual service station in question.... MORE