One of the things the Establishment hates is individualism. They get unhappy when you don’t toe the line on, say, voting to remain in the EU. They stop you from complaining about the affects of immigration on your town, they dislike you visiting Wetherspoons, they get twitchy if you point out men can’t become women, they detest it when they’re not rinsing you for all the tax they can.
They would hate my mate Barry (not his real name).
Sixty-four years old and not long retired, he’s a spiky-haired punk rocker and movie devotee. Living by himself in south-west England, he enjoys his life of pubbing, TV, sport, concerts and general loafing. He has a number of amusing eccentricities…
The vast majority of space in his fridge and freezer, neither of which are large, is taken up by products that are over 30 years old. They include Batman soft drinks, Batman and Superman candy sticks, and Superman, Batman and The Flash ‘water ice block mix’ sticks. There are Spider-Man fairy cakes and milk chocolate shapes. There are four Captain Scarlet yoghurts that went out of date last century. There is a pack of Batman pork and chicken sausage cured & cooked (use-by date: 06.03.99) and Batman Of The Future finely blended pork and turkey slices cured and cooked (‘use by 13 Mar’, year unknown). Defrosting and eating them would possibly bring instant death.
Open these packets and prepare to die
He also has scores of boxes of breakfast cereal from around the same time, featuring, say, Spider-Man on Sugar Puffs (with a model inside) and Cinnamon Grahams (with a free web shooter inside). They are all unopened. Presumably, the cereal has disintegrated into dust, or worse. There are Spider-Man Easter eggs from 30 years ago too, and Spider-Man Pringles. In most of the kitchen cupboards that house these items, there’s literally no room for new food. But then Barry eats very little, perhaps a cheese roll every couple of days, but he downs about 50 pints of beer a week; I join him for many of them.
Do NOT eat these cereals
He used to have some cans of Batman baked beans, but, disappointingly, they collapsed in on themselves. “I thought they would last forever,” he bemoans. “I couldn’t sleep after they collapsed, I was so upset.” Some Thunderbirds tins do remain, though.
There was a power cut once and his Spider-Man strawberry lolly melted, although he keeps the packet for posterity.
Why do you hang on to these things, I ask him. “I just like them…” he replies.
The bathroom offers no escape from the memorabilia: this includes Batmobile shower gel, a Captain Scarlet toothbrush and holder, Spider-Man eau de toilette, Ultimate Spider-Man plasters and Superman bubble bath – all unused. “The bubble bath Batman is great – his arms rotate in a punching motion,” he says. But he’s never used it at all? “No. Well, I never have a bath.” (I should add that Barry does have showers.)
Batman is certainly one of Barry ’s favourites, he’s everywhere about the house. Plus, “I used to have a Batmobile phone – it really worked as a phone!”
Elsewhere there are thousands more bits of memorabilia, including innumerable comics and magazines, toys and collectables, cassettes, badges, DVDs, CDs and VHS videos.
Admit it, you wish you had a room like this
Barry will also regularly buy copies of old newspapers off eBay, on the off-chance that a copy of, say, The Sun from 1977 will feature an item on someone like the Sex Pistols. But his most impressive newspaper hoarding has to be his collection of obituaries, which he has been collecting since the early 1980s. Now, when anyone dies that he has heard of or had affection for he will buy a copy of a newspaper with their obituary in, and often buy several different papers – when Andy Kershaw died recently, he bought all the main ones. Sometimes the whole paper is kept, sometimes just the relevant pages – largely in piles of years and decades. Some years ago a friend built him a six-foot-long coffin to fit them in, but it soon proved to be not large enough and was later dismantled.
A tiny selection of Barry’s newspaper collection
Barry refuses point blank to record television. This means that when he wants to watch a programme he has to watch it live – and it doesn’t matter to him what time of day it is. He’s a great devotee of Talking Pictures TV and will regularly watch their movies till 4 or 5 in the morning. He has turned the sofa into a bed and will often spend his nights there.
“Don’t the ad breaks annoy you?” I ask.
“Not really, I just pick up a book and read.”
He has a good collection of books to choose from. He has hundreds of books on punk and tons of old novelisations of old films. He also loves old annuals, such as Batman (natch), Danger Man and most Gerry Anderson shows, and his collection of Tarzan annuals only has one missing.
“I admit, I occasionally think ‘What is the point of this rubbish I keep?’” he concedes.
A cork board more eclectic than most
He never uses zebra crossings, refuses to, believing they are the State telling us what to do.
He hopes Reform wins the next election and has strong views about the demographic transformation of his country over the course of his life.
Barry’s quite content to keep living his life as he does for the remainder of his days – which he claims will be when he reaches 77. This is in part because it matches 1977, his favourite year, when punk was rampant. He says he’s actually quite looking forward to his demise.
But before then he is determined to get some more good, solid shelves put up first, though. He certainly needs them.
Russell David is the author of the Mad World Substack.
If you enjoy The New Conservative and would like to support our work, please consider buying us a coffee or sharing this piece with your friends – it would really help to keep us going. Thank you!
‘Barry’ should claim he’s living with OCD and secure some extra benefits dosh to further his hobbies.
I like Barry! We don’t have enough eccentrics in this country anymore. The House of Lords used to be full of them, as did the Church of England. All gone now because they don’t conform to the modern woke blandness. Even the Monster Raving Looney party is a shadow of its former self. I now want to go out and build a ridiculous folly!