Watson’s devotion to the charts began when he was presented with the Guinness Book of Hit Singles one Christmas. Starting a collection made sense: with a mother who had worked in a record store, he grew up in a musical household and loved to collect things. “I just looked at the list in the back of the book and thought: oh, that might be a really good idea!” he says, speaking from his home in Dunstable. By the time he began his quest in 1988, the charts had already seen 605 No. 1 singles. With Aswad’s Don’t Turn Around just released under his belt, he set out to find the previous 604 releases. Growing up in High Wycombe, Watson would take trains to London to browse music fairs and second-hand record shops in search of his bounty. He answered ads in Time Out and Loot magazines and wrote to record sellers. “I’d spend endless bloody hours looking through dealers’ stock,” he says. “I had a handwritten list that I would photocopy and take with me to get the word out. Some would write back to say what they had with their prices written down.” His wish list was several pages long. “Then you start putting lines on them, your list gets shorter, and you think: Well, I have a chance to do all of this. Once I started building it, that fueled me to keep going.” Watson would break down the search by release decade. the older ones were harder to find. But he relished the challenge, choosing the rarer of the two when singles had been released on two formats in transitional periods. “You can’t collect them all!” … Dave Watson at home in Dunstable. Photo: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian Discovering eBay at the turn of the millennium was a turning point: at the time Watson had fewer than 10 singles on his list: “I remember going on for the first time, finding the remaining half a dozen and just thinking: wow, this is crazy . I looked and looked and looked, then all of a sudden you type it in and there it is.’ When he bought a 78-rpm record of Lita Roza’s (How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window, which reached No.1 in 1953, his collection was up to date. At one point, Watson toyed with the idea of collecting all the No 1s from the official UK album chart, although he says that, thankfully, logic kicked in. all? There will be hundreds of them!” laughs. “You can’t collect them all!” To accommodate changing technology and listening habits, digital downloads and streaming songs became eligible for the singles chart in 2005 and 2014 respectively. Accordingly, Watson began downloading No.1s and burning them to CD, complete with a printed sleeve and label. In 2020, he began making homemade Now That’s What I Call-style compilations of the year’s top hits. “I try to make the CDs look like they were purchased commercially,” he says. “I guess it’s a little old school.” Get music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras. Every genre, every season, every week Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Physical singles are barely out there these days. (The physical singles sales charts read like a mission from another world; right now, Firestarter by the Prodigy is No. 1.) While he misses the process of touring record stands, Watson can now maintain his collection of his computer. It’s a weekly ritual: “On Friday afternoon, I check the charts to see what’s No. 1 and write it down,” he explains. “Sometimes if I can’t do it on Friday, I’ll do it on Saturday, but very rarely do I forget – because I want to keep collecting.” Watson’s ever-growing archive of 78s, 45s and CDs is now on display in his home. He doesn’t listen to the singles much anymore – he uses his mobile phone to go back to his favorites from his teenage years in the 80s, as well as later favorite hits from the Prodigy to the Spice Girls – but the collection is a source of pride as and icebreaker. “I’m trying not to drone on about it, but it’s a good talking point. It opens up a conversation,” he says. Although he doesn’t really like today’s chart music (“it’s not really my taste”), Watson isn’t giving up his hobby anytime soon. “It’s just one of those things: I’ve taken it so far that I’d be an idiot to stop now,” he says. “I’ll continue it as long as I can because now it seems part of me. That’s just what I do.”
