GWR holder for magazine collection says wife once joked about having to ‘sleep on piles of Playboy’ due to lack of space

A man with the Guinness World Record (GWR) for the largest collection of magazines has said his wife once joked about having to “sleep on piles of Playboy” due to a lack of space.

James Hyman, 55, from Primrose Hill in London, first began seriously collecting magazines aged 18 when he started working for MTV.

He said he worked in programming and script writing and found that magazines, both new and old, were useful reference material, offering a unique insight into popular culture.

Over the following 20 years, James steadily grew his stash, purchasing new copies as well as back issues – until by 2011, he said he had some 450 crates full.

That year he applied for a GWR and, after spending approximately 128 days counting, it was officially certified that he had the largest collection of magazines, with a total of 50,953, in August 2012.

Since then, James said his collection has grown rapidly as people continue to donate entire collections and rare copies.

Reflecting on his collection for GWR’s 70th anniversary on August 27, James told PA Real Life: “Though impossible to work out, I think I’ve spent at least a million pounds.

“There’s something incredibly unique about magazines. They capture so much that the internet can’t and there’s something so deep about the sum of all its parts.

“I’m very proud of the whole collection and proud when people come looking for knowledge.

“Not everything is on Google, it doesn’t have it all, so there’s real value there.”

As a child, James loved comics but he did not start collecting until later.

He said his passion for magazines grew out of his love of pop culture, something which he nurtured throughout his teenage years.

When James left school in 1988, aged 18, he said he went to MTV’s office in Camden, London.

“I begged for a job, I said I’d do anything,” he said.

“I just loved the whole environment. It was buzzing, an incredible place to work.

“It was an exciting time too… there were so many cultural explosions happening.”

James said he secured a role in the press office and then moved into programming and script writing, becoming a producer and director for club music shows such as The Party Zone.

He said he realised magazines’ ability to capture such a range of popular culture made them perfect reference tools.

It was here that James began to grow his collection substantially, buying issues as they came out, as well as entire collections.

He said he started a habit of purchasing two at a time if possible – one to use and one to preserve.

“MTV were very kind and gave me a budget,” he said.

“Because I was so into it, I would source back issues from a publication called Loot Magazine, which would advertise collections for sale.

“It was very useful to have back issues. Let’s say there was a David Bowie or Freddie Mercury weekend, I’d read through old magazines to find something to talk about.”

James said he continued working at MTV until 2000, when he left to DJ, work in radio and produce TV programmes for the BBC and Channel 4.

By then, his collection was substantial enough that much of it had to be kept in storage.

“There’d be huge stacks in the toilet,” James said.

“My wife joked that she’d have to sleep on piles of Playboy.”

In 2011, James said he read an article in The New Yorker, a favourite magazine of his, about Ashrita Furman, who became famous as the man with the most Guinness World Records titles.

He said that gave him the idea of registering for a record of his own.

Along with his friend, Tory Turk, James began the monumental task of counting his collection, a process which he says took 128 days in total and took place over the best part of a year.

James said his total figure of 50,953 magazines earned him the GWR title in August 2012.

“The record was an incredible moment and a big turning point,” he said.

“It was a stamp of validity that gave the collection real credence and a sense that it was doing something more.”

James said people began donating their own collections, offering rare editions and publications, meaning he was continually breaking his own record – though he said he has no intention of re-counting his collection any time soon.

The record also made him realise that he could commercialise his hobby, charging visitors for access to the library.

“Let’s say someone needs to find out about Kylie Minogue, they can look in our magazines and see the whole arc of her career in there, right from when she was first mentioned,” he said.

“It’s amazing like that.”

In 2015, James said he moved the collection from a warehouse in Islington to Woolwich, where it was housed until 2023.

Now it is housed in a “secret” location where he said the running costs are significantly less.

James said he is less obsessive about the collection nowadays, preferring to see it as a useful resource that he can offer the world – and his main focus now is digitising it, so it can be more widely accessible.

Although he is offered magazines and collections all the time, he said he only selects magazines he feels are interesting enough.

James said popular culture remains the collection’s main focus, with more than 5,000 separate publications covering topics such as art, music, film, fashion, LGBTQ, counter culture or cars, dating from the 1800s to the present.

“I’ve got everything from a 1900s Tatler, NME to Nexus, Wired’s launch in the 90s, Hacker Magazine 2600 and a fabulous run of Fortean Times,” he said.

James said that recently he was given a collection of FBI magazines.

“I didn’t even get past the title pages! There were these amazing headlines about things like industrial bridge theft,” he said.

“There’s some incredible stuff that’s never made it on to the internet. I want to save all that.”

James goes on to say that despite the internet’s hold on culture, he is sure that print will endure.

“I like to believe physical magazines still have a role to play. Print is not dead,” he said.

“There are fewer magazines now for sure, but the strong ones have survived and will continue to survive.

“The written word has been around far longer than the internet.

“There’s something about its tactility, feeling the pages as you turn them. People will always value that.”