Oscar Wilde once wrote that charity creates a multitude of sins. I like to imagine that the Irish chin-stroker made this quip while standing in front of a complete box set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs in his local Oxfam shop. Or perhaps he was browsing the shelf of discarded Davina McCall workout DVDs. He may even have been thumbing through a well-worn copy of Karin Slaughter’s seminal novel Indelible or checking a Michael Bolton 12” for scratches.
For nowhere is the cultural cache more unlikely than within the nation’s charity shops. As a student I worked in a Leeds charity shop that paid host to an array of eccentrics of the sort last seen chewing on the brickwork in Bedlam. From rose-tinted sexual astronauts to toothless tea-swigging miscreants, the place was stiff with the mildly deranged and was, without doubt, the happiest place of employment I have ever known. So enjoyable, in fact, that I have recently started volunteering in the Dalston Oxfam. What a joy it is to once again be sorting through bin bags of some stranger’s faintly suspicious donations, while swilling red label tea and humming along to smooth reggae hits.
While sifting through this collection of throwaway treasure, I have found myself wondering what sort of cultural education you could gain solely from the contents of charity shops. Forget trips to the cinema; I’m talking about a film history made up entirely of Predator, Sliding Doors, Alien Resurrection, Elf, Donnie Brasco, Bridget Jones and Forrest Gump. I would like to create a cinephile who rejoices in a weekend marathon of Roy Chubby Brown live shows and early Richard Curtis rom-coms, interspersed with the odd early ’90s CGI-heavy action film and Will Ferrell fart-fest…
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