Dustbin Dave, officially crowned Anorak of the Year

From bins to benches, banality is a source of joy for members of the Dull Men’s Club. In a world obsessed with speed, spectacle and social media sparkle, this cheerful band of anti-influencers find delight in the everyday

From bins to benches, banality is a source of joy for members of the Dull Men’s Club. In a world obsessed with speed, spectacle and social media sparkle, this cheerful band of anti-influencers find delight in the everyday

It’s 2018 and Dave Clark is wandering through Norfolk’s Thrigby Hall Wildlife Gardens. There are leopards, otters and whooping gibbons, but it’s a litter bin that catches Clark’s eye. Not just any old litter bin. This one is dressed up like a Fab ice lolly. Shocking pink. Chocolate brown. Multi-coloured sprinkles.

“I literally said out loud: ‘That is a decent bin!’” Clark recalls. “I got my camera and took a picture, and from that day onwards I photographed pretty much any bin that stood out. It’s amazing how many bins are out there – once you get started it can become a bit of an addiction.”

Clark, AKA ‘Dustbin Dave’, has since amassed a library of thousands of bin pics. Thanks to his unusual obsession – or what Clark calls his ‘binterest’ – he’s reaped newspaper headlines, talked rubbish on daytime telly and fronted anti-littering campaigns.

Yet for all the media fanfare, nothing quite matches the honour that came his way a couple of years ago via one of the internet’s more peculiar corners: The Dull Men’s Club (DMC). Dave isn’t just a self-confessed anorak. As the DMC’s Anorak of the Year 2022, he’s an officially recognised one.

“I was blown away,” Clark says. “Really surprised, really pleased and really honoured that my hobby was recognised. I do love it, and it does make people smile: I think that’s the main thing.”

‘Celebrating the ordinary’ has been the DMC’s motto since the club was founded almost 40 years ago. These days most of the action – if you can call it that – takes place on the club’s Facebook group, which now counts more than 1.7 million ‘dullsters’ worldwide.

‘Celebrating the ordinary’ has been the DMC’s motto since the club was founded almost 40 years ago

More than just a haven for eccentric hobbyists like Clark, it’s the place to ponder on the odd and the overlooked, those blink-and-you-miss-it curiosities that pop into the brain and vanish before they’ve had a chance to take flight. In the DMC, it’s hip to be square. Beige is the new black.

A scroll through some of the thousands of posts added daily by its members gives a flavour of what’s on offer. There are musings on the moisture absorbency of one slab of concrete compared to its neighbouring slabs, photos detailing the insides of a garden sprinkler gearbox, a collection of lost-and-found hairbands, a cloud in the shape of a lion.

Pictures often include a comedy banana ‘for scale’. Car dashboards and serendipitous odometer readings get a lot of love, as do whimsical appreciation societies: groups championing telegraph poles, roundabouts, corduroy fabric and pork pies.