Growing up in a small town in the mid Eighties in England, I was in love with music with one pound pocket money a week. This pound was not quite enough to buy myself a hit 7" single.

However, the only record shop in town had a magnificent desperate money making ruse : All the singles that had totally failed to chart were savagely wrapped in cling film, forced into plain brown paper bags as if they were some strange kind of porn, and sold in anonymous packs of 12 for a rather magic figure : one pound.

I had no idea what they contained - indeed, this was part of the fun - and I quickly amassed hundreds of 'failed records' very very cheaply.

It struck me recently that I hadn't heard these for many years and a strange melancholy hit me. Were they always destined to fail? Where are these people now? How might things have been different for their creators?

And, just as importantly, does my initial outlay of just 8 pence per record mean I may now actually be in profit if I tried to sell them?

So, here they are in all their glory : The mad, the bad and the brilliant.

These are not the also rans of the Eighties, but the didn't runs. It is a strange much untravelled land containing place names like : Georgio, Alan Darby, A Girl Called Johnny, President, Jean Beauvoir, The Glass Beat Game, The Lift.

These are the hits that never were. Records that can't be forgotten as they were never remembered in the first place.

And here they proudly stand, at last reaching an audience larger than just me.

They are not The Beatles.

I Am Not The Beatles T-Shirts

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You can buy every record known to mankind at gemm.com. Except Georgio, obviously.

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