Dave watson

An unsuspecting set of shelves houses Dave Watsonʼs record-breaking music collection. Your head tells you that a complete set of UK number-one singles should warrant a dedicated room, or at least an entire wall, but a fairly small unit in the corner of Daveʼs living room is actually enough for the c1500 chart-topping tracks from 1952 to today. A framed certificate from Guinness World Records ensures you donʼt miss it.

Starting with the first-recorded UK number-one single, Al Martinoʼs Here in My Heart, and spanning more than 70 years of music history, itʼs possibly the only complete set in the world. A top-12 chart was pioneered in 1952, by the New Musical Express newspaper, and based on sales from a pool of record shops, then later usurped by rivals such as Record Retailerʼs top 50 in 1960, before being compiled by the Official Charts Company from 1969.

“Itʼs almost a social history,” says Dave, who started the collection after he was given a copy of the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles for Christmas in 1987, a few years before he bought his BMW Isetta, which now sits alongside a Messerschmitt KR200 in his modest garage.

“I started working out how on earth I was going to collect them all,” he recalls. “We didnʼt have the internet in 1988. I bought the 20 March number one, which was Aswadʼs Donʼt Turn Around, and that was it: I was hooked.”

Local record fairs were good places to start: “I talked with the dealers, explaining what I was trying to do. Some of them had shops and Iʼd go with a handwritten list that Iʼd copied from the book. It was quite long to start with.

“After a while, I decided to concentrate on a few years at a time. Iʼd get as many as possible and then move on, avoiding looking for needles in haystacks. Eventually it came together and people even started helping me look.”

When Dave managed to track down the elusive (How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window? by Lita Roza on eBay,