Seven years ago, Jonny Trunk entered the house of a hoarder in Stockport that was bursting at the seams with a goldmine of British ephemera from the last half century. “You couldn’t get into the house,” recalls Trunk, who is an avid pop culture collector, as well as a writer, DJ, broadcaster and record-label owner. “It was full of all this stuff he had collected indiscriminately.”
Growing up in an orphanage in Surrey, John Townsend began collecting milk bottle tops and by the 1950s had amassed a huge collection of cigarette and tobacco cards. He then simply continued at full speed. “He never stopped collecting ephemera,” says Trunk. “If it was a printed piece of paper with something on it, he’d have it.” Townsend died in 2016, leaving every inch of his five-bedroom house, as well as the caravan and summerhouse, bursting with fizzy drinks cans, sweet wrappers, crisp packets, cereal boxes, flyers, cigarette cards and countless other items.
