"I'd be stupid to stop him now!" The man with the only complete collection of UK No. 1 singles

For 70 years, the UK singles chart has been a constant in our lives: a buzzing weekly countdown in print, TV and radio. But for Dave Watson, it's more than just background noise: it's a lifestyle. The 55-year-old has been collecting copies of UK No. 1 hits since the late 1980s; today he owns all 1,404 UK No. 1 singles, dating back to the birth of the charts in 1952. He believes it is the only complete collection of its kind.

By the time he began his mission in 1988, the charts had already seen 605 No. 1 singles. With Aswad's new Don't Turn Around under his arm, he set out to find the previous 604 releases.

Growing up in High Wycombe, Watson would take trains to London to scour music fairs and second-hand record shops for his bounty. He answered advertisements in Time Out and Loot magazines and wrote to record stores. “I spent endless hours rummaging through dealership inventory,” he says. “I had a handwritten list that I would photocopy and take with me to spread the word. Some wrote down to say what they had with their prices scribbled on.”

His list wish list had started out on several pages. "Then you start putting lines in it, your list gets shorter and you think, well, I actually have a chance to do all of this. Once I started to Building it just kept me going. The older ones were harder to find. But he enjoyed the challenge, opting for the rarer of the two as singles were released on two formats in a time of transition. /p>

The discovery of eBay around the millennium was a turning point: at the At the time, Watson had less than 10 singles on his list: "I remember going on for the very first time, finding the remaining half dozen and thinking, wow, this is crazy. I had been watching and watching and watching, then all of a sudden you typed it and there it is. (How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window, which reached number 1 in 1953, his collection was up to date.

At one point Watson stroked the idea of ​​collecting all the No. 1s on the Official UK Albums Chart too, although he says luckily common sense came into play. "It's not so much the money, it's more about where to go you put everything on? There are going to be hundreds of blimmin!" he laughs. "You can't collect everything!"

To adapt to changing technologies and habits listening, the d...