The Dull Men's Club: Celebrating the Beauty of the Ordinary

The group is for people who prefer “a room without a view”, he said, and want to share how neatly they have arranged their sock drawer, or highlight a particularly beautiful drain cover. Click founded the club while he was a tax lawyer in New York in the 1980s, when he realised there were not enough clubs or associations for people who just wanted an uneventful life. He brought the concept with him when he moved to the UK in 1996, accruing a legion of online followers on both sides of the Atlantic. Both men and women are welcome. For four decades, Click’s mission has been simple. “It’s OK to be dull, it’s OK to be ordinary,” he said. “Enjoy what you’ve got.” The club, which exists mainly online, is “for people who want to avoid glitz and glam” and “are not constantly moving on to the next big thing”. Instead of suffering from fomo (the fear of missing out) they celebrate jomo (the joy of it). Sunday’s meeting was opened by Roy Palmer, 86, a Chelsea pensioner who has been a town crier for 25 years. He turned up in full ceremonial dress to proclaim that StJohn Burkett was to be crowned the club’s anorak of the year for his services to competitive conkers. Most people use social media to make themselves and their lives seem more interesting than they really are by posting pictures of beautiful places, delicious food and exciting events. Those who post on the DMC’s Facebook page are looking to do the precise opposite; to embrace the trivial and find beauty in the mundane. No hobby is too niche, no interest too boring. Dave Clark, 55, from Caister-on-Sea in Norfolk, once posted a picture of a dustbin decorated like a Fab ice lolly. This led others to send him pictures of their own favourite bins. Going by the name Dustbin Dave, he now curates Bins Fantastic, an account which has more than 5,000 images of unusually shaped or exotically located rubbish bins. “They’re all addicted to it now,” he said. Harry Seager, 35, from Aylesbury, was on his way to a classic car show two years ago when he opened a Mars bar to find it was lacking the signature ripples on top. He took a photo and posted it on the DMC. Within hours, it had been liked 15,000 times and he was being asked to give interviews to Australian and Indian broadcasters. Mars offered a £2 voucher to compensate him for the lack of ripples, sending him viral a second time. Does he still have the famous bar? “I didn’t know it was going to blow up,” he said. “So I ate it.” Tim Webb, 69, from Orpington, has been on a crusade since 2023 to have all the potholes fixed in the London borough of Bromley. To make his point in what he described as a “quirky and quintessentially British” way, he creates and photographs art installations based around damaged surfaces, and even has a calendar showcasing his creations. • How good is your council at fixing potholes? Check our map Webb is among past recipients of the anorak of the year title. Rachel Williamson won in 2021 for making crocheted art to put on postboxes. Since setting eyes on Broadway Tower in the Cotswolds as a five-year-old, Glyn Headley from London, 79, has been in love with folly towers, built as indulgent flights of fancy around the British countryside, and has written books about them. “My wife has put up with this for 50 years and has been very patient,” he said. The club offers an antidote to the frenetic pace of the world and the apocalyptic nature of the news, according to Burkett, 65, from Peterborough.