Everyone has a hobby.
My father-in-law is big into model railways, trundling his layout around the exhibitions of the South East. Some treasure their football programmes, or collect Panini football stickers. Clive Evenden collects monopoly sets.
I remember Eastenders’ Dr Legg collected butterflies. My auntie used to collect stamps. My cousin was trying to collect every single produced by Stock, Aitken and Waterman – and I was very jealous.
For my own part, as well as nurturing my collection of recordings of 1990s radio jingles (principally from the West Midlands), I collect the manifestos (and single transferable count sheets) of students’ union officer elections, going back quite a few years now.
I promise it’s a more interesting archive than it sounds. It’s like a social history of the sector, youth politics and fonts – and you track both the student issues (and framing of them) of the day and the issues that the sector never seems to be able to solve.
