Dillman’s Club – Is it really…interesting?

In New York City, in the late 1980s, a group of friends sat in a bar near Central Park and flipped through a magazine.

One man turned to his friends after watching stories of boxing, wrestling and judo and said with some regret: “We don’t do any of those things.”

Almost 40 years later, on a coach on the M40 in England, a different man opened the Mars bar.

When he noticed that the bar was smooth instead of twisted, he posted a photo on Facebook. This post was picked up by the media- Including the BBC – and the story of the extraordinary smooth chocolate was read by millions of people around the world.

The friends in Manhattan, and the man with the Mars bar, don’t know each other – but they are connected by a transatlantic thread. Their stories mark the founding, and perhaps the pinnacle, of a growing fellowship: the Dillman’s Club.

Grover Click, now 85, was one of those friends at a New York bar in the 1980s.

“When my friend said ‘We don’t do any of those things’, someone else said: ‘We’re kind of lazy, aren’t we?’ So I said: ‘Okay – let’s start a club for our dull men.’

The club started as a joke. They raced elevators (or elevators) to see which was the fastest, and once organized a bus tour that started and ended in Manhattan, without going anywhere in between.

“We were driving around outside and the driver explained the tire pressure. “Such stupidity,” Grover recalls.

In 1996, after Grover moved to England, his nephew offered to create a website for “that stupid Dullman’s Club”. And from there, Grover says, “it kind of took shape, and now it’s really caught on”.

Grover’s Dull Men’s Club Facebook group — that’s the one with the copyright symbol in the title, are copycats — now has 1.5 million members. On it, men and women of all ages celebrate their observations and passions without fear of ridicule (ridicule goes against the rules, as does politics, religion, and swearing).

This week’s posts include an appreciation of the £2 coin design. before and after photos of brass instrument repair; And how long it takes to fill a water bottle. One person commented: “Every morning at work I refill my water bottle and it takes 47 seconds… sometimes I close my eyes and count to 47.”

But Dillman’s Club is more than just a Facebook page: it also includes a newsletter, a calendar, real-life meetings, and awards — including Anorak of the Year, for the truly dedicated Dullster (Grover Dullster prefers — “the opposite of hipster,” he says — to Dillard).

This year’s winner was Tim Webb, 68, from Orpington, south-east London. He takes pictures of potholes with plastic ducks.

Tim began taking his photographs in January last year, when a pothole in his area was not properly repaired.

“I spoke to a council official, and he recommended that I look at the Monster Raving Looney Party manifesto from 2017. There, it says residents should highlight potholes with plastic ducks – seriously. From, it’s true. And I thought. Well, I’ll put the plastic ducks in the pits.”

After taking the photos (for safety reasons, he works during quiet hours and gets a friend to help) he sent them to the council, and posted them on a local Facebook group. Encouraged by feedback, he progressed from plastic ducks to other visual jokes.

“I put a toad in the pit – not a real toad – and wrote: ‘This is my favorite Sunday dish.’ And people either get it or they don’t.”

Tim doesn’t know how many craters he’s photographed — he estimates 100 to 150 — but now crater art is the “interesting part” of his expedition. He admits he has a spreadsheet of every road defect in the borough, allowing him to track repairs.

“There are about 2,500 entries,” he says.

After seeing pictures of the crater online, Grover encourages Tim to join the Dillman’s Club. Tim did just that, and was delighted to accept the Anorak of the Year award in which he was presented.

But for Tim, there’s a serious side to his hobby, even if it seems… well, less glamorous than others.

“I don’t do it for the money or the fame,” he says. “I do this because I want to make a difference in my community.”

This is an outlook shared by the Dill Men’s Club Anorak of the Year from 2021 – which turns out to be neither male nor male.

In 2020, during the first Covid lockdown, Rachel Williamson was looking at the socially distanced queue outside a chemist in her hometown of Royal in Denbighshire.

“My twin sister has joined the queue. They’re all looking sad, and I’m waiting for her in the car. And I was just thinking – can I put a glittery hat on the postbox to make the queue smile? ?”

Although Rachel – a 61-year-old retired police detective – had knitted since she was a girl, she couldn’t crochet. With little else to do in lockdown, he tried, and within two days had a shiny hat for the post box outside the chemist. Another, for a box outside the post office, soon followed.

“My sister went to the post office and she said: ‘Nobody’s talking about covid anymore, they’re talking about the post box topper outside the door.’

She has since topped more than 300 post boxes, and created countless other decorations for the community. She makes requests from elsewhere in the UK – “I sent one to Scotland, one to Nantwich [in Cheshire]”- and the natives come with supplies.

“My living room is full of wool,” she says. “I don’t know where the Christmas tree will go.”

During the lockdown, Rachel’s toppers were featured in a charity book and calendar, which brought her to the attention of the Dillman’s Club. So how does it feel to invite a woman to such a club?

“I had never heard of it, but I felt very proud of myself,” she says.

Yet despite being the anorak of the year, is Rachel’s passion too dull? Isn’t it colorful, life-enhancing, even dare we say- Quite interesting?

“I have three older sons, and when they’re around, all I talk about is my knitting,” she says. “I’m the weakest person on the planet to them. I’ve gone from a speedy spy to fluff and stuff.”

Like Tim, Rachel has found purpose in her (arguably) dull hobby.

“After 18 years in the police, it has restored my faith in people. The people at Royal are great. And we’ve made a lot of people smile.”

He received his Anorak of the Year award at a ceremony in a pub near Llangollen.

“People who don’t have hobbies are dull people.” Rachel says.

It’s a feeling that also came to Grover Click – the original Dillman – when compiling the club’s calendar, decades after that first conversation in a New York bar.

“We started writing about these people and thought it was kind of funny,” he says. “But then you see these guys are onto something.

To sum it up, Grover pointed to his foreword to the 2024 Dullman’s Club calendar.

“What did he do? [the dull men] Doing is called in Japan. ikigai“They write.” It gives a sense of purpose, a motivating force. A reason to jump out of bed in the morning.”