A golf ball collector, folly fan, mountain measurer and a man who has kept a diary of each time he has mown the lawn for 30 years also appear in the Dull Men of Great Britain book. Last year The Dull Men’s Club produced a calendar with pictures of its 12 most mundane members. Now Leland Carlson, assistant vice-president of the Club, has found dozens of even duller men and produced a book to celebrate their eccentricities, which will hit the shelves tomorrow (Thurs).
From collecting toy soldiers and vacuum cleaners to visiting bandstands and photographing plaques, the 40 men are all passionate about things, which others think are dull.
“We wanted to have a bit of fun. The British are well known for being eccentric and this book is a celebration of that,” said Leland.
The book includes bandstand obsessive Paul Rabbitts, from Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, who has visited a remarkable 300 bandstands across the UK and kept detailed records. Another “boring” Brit is pensioner Jeremy Burton, who lives near Windsor in East Berkshire, and has spent the last 50 years counting the huge number of countries he has visited. David Grisenthwaite, from Kirkcaldy in Scotland, got in the book for keeping a diary of each time he has mown the lawn since 1984. Actor Tim Barker, who lives in Silloth, Cumbria, has been collecting toy soldiers for 50 years and he now has more than 12,000. Rail timetable compiler John Potter, 60, from Oundle, Northamptonshire, also features in the book as he spends his time compiling the European Rail Timetable. John, who loves numbers, had been part of the timetable editorial team since 1998 and when Thomas Cook stopped printing it two years ago he bought the rights to the timetable. The Dull Men’s Club was originally started in New York in the 1980s and later spread to the UK and elsewhere in the world. Its main focal point nowadays is its website where members communicate, in a subdued, understated way, their quiet exploits.
Dull Men of Great Britain: Celebrating the Ordinary by Leland Carlson is published by Ebury Press.
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