What?
The famous Keep Britain Tidy campaign symbol and a particular dustbin in Falmouth.

When?
1980's - 2008

Why?
The little man's just brilliant isn't he, really? Plus the whole thing got inextricably entangled with happy childhood memories of holidays in Cornwall.

What happened?
So far as I recall, the obsession was born in the early 1980's. Summers back in the day meant an extended visit to my grandparents in the little Cornish port of Falmouth. In the evenings, we would generally stroll down through the town to Fish Strand Quay and back. It was on this very quay that I caught my first glimpse of the seminal Man.
It was on a particular dustbin, next to the pay and display machine, that I saw him for the first time, and an obsession was born. Every night that we walked past him, the obsession got a little stronger. Walking down to the quay became a sort of mini pilgrimage. I remember the smell of the bin clearly - the sort of mixture of damp chip paper and vinegar that you'd find in any dustbin in any seaside town in England - as I stood gazing at the Man. Being little, I was on eye level with him then. Not that he had any eyes, obviously. Tossing his little paper sheet into his neat little bin, he looks so carefree to this very day. Remarkably so, in fact, for a man who seems to have suffered some terrible trauma at the waist.
After a few years, our Man on the bins was suddenly joined (in Cornwall at least) by a friend - Mrs. Baggit. For anyone who remains sadly unfamiliar with this bizarre character, you'll be pleased to know that she was an obsession in her own right, and you can read more about her nasty exploits here.
After a few years the whole obsession died away. But old obsessions never die really, they just vanish into some nether region of my mind. Once in a while, some mental land mine will go off and a long lost obsession will suddenly come back.
A couple of years ago, the Keep Britain Tidy Man obsession re-emerged with an absolute vengeance. The moment of epiphany was in a public toilet (isn't it always) in Eyam, Derbyshire, and I'm somewhat ashamed to say that Deb was there and it was on our honeymoon. On one of the cubicle doors, I noticed the following cartoon. Unfortunately it was damaged where some dingbat had attempted to rip it off. The version on the right has been restored to what I assume is something of its original glory.

In itself, you will no doubt agree that this cartoon is excellent. I like the mystery created by the missing portion of the message - "Don't....make..." what? Answers on the back of a postcard please. Anyhow, suddenly, it all came rushing back to me...the bin, the vinegary smell, the sound of seagulls pulling stuff out all over the quayside... I then distinguished myself as the oddest man in Eyam that day by rushing out of the bog, grabbing a camera off Deb, and rushing back in again, to the consternation of two nice old ladies who were sat on a bench nearby.
Following this relapse, in times of stress, even the normally unassailable Bollard No 6 was challenged as my fantasy hideout by the dustbin on the quay. I pictured myself squashed in among the chip papers, smelling the vinegar and listening to the seagulls. To ward things off a bit, I took to putting a bit of vinegar on a tissue and sniffing it to recreate the effect. Yes, that is weird. It really is.
Now this goes back some time, you may be thinking. How come I never got round to putting this page up before? The reason was that I wanted to do the job properly, and that meant revisiting that dustbin on the quay. Unfortunately, living in Hull made that an 800 mile round trip. Even I struggled to justify that to myself, despite having recently carried out an 1100 mile journey in the course of Operation Nestor, and the mission to get  the Keep Britain Tidy Man onto the site foundered for a while.

Fortunately, I recently I managed to land a job in the South West of England, so the trip to the bin became a far more manageable 80 miles. The great day finally dawned in April, 2008, when we headed down to Falmouth with high hopes of laying both the Keep Britain Tidy Man  and Mrs. Baggit to rest. You can read about the results of the hunt for Mrs. Baggit here, but what you really want to know is, was the original bin still there?
Well, on arrival at Falmouth, we headed down to Fish Strand Quay. As we wandered through the town, I sensed  that something was awry ....badly awry in fact. The town's original round bins, which, admittedly, suffered from the fundamental design flaw of allowing the local Seagulls to empty the contents all over the place, had been replaced with some sort of new, armoured, über-bin. Even those bearing the cheery slogan "Your Litter Please" had vanished. And what was this - the jolly little Keep Britain Tidy bloke had been replaced by some sort of stupid, unnecessarily urbane cartoon litter-ponce! Tossing what looks like a wet nappy into a smug looking little cartoon bin, this surely couldn't be a pretender to the KBT Man's throne? Surely, the bin on the quay couldn't have suffered the same fate?
Well, I'm afraid it had. There was a bin by the pay and display machine, but it had suffered the same sorry fate as, seemingly, all the other bins in Falmouth. I was feeling pretty depressed by this, as I asked Deb to do the honours by shepherding someone's annoying kid out of the way so we could get a picture of her using the bin to put something in. Afterwards, as the annoying child looked on in confused disgust, I took the chance to have a poke in the bin, and see if it still smelled the same. The vinegary smell was still there, but, somehow, it just wasn't the same. And it was all due to the annoying cartoon bin-tosser. All day long, the new bin person taunted me, seeming to call out from every bin I passed.
"You were expecting the Keep Britain Tidy Man" he seemed to sneer, "But you're not going to get him, because he's dead. He's dead, and I killed him. So take your stupid obsessions, get back in your car, and f**k off".
I was not pleased. Surely this hateful litter Nazi couldn't have commandeered every bin in Falmouth? About six O'clock, while strolling round the seafront, the question was answered by whatever gods deal with this sort of thing. In  the distance, next to the Gyllyngdune chapel, I noticed a bin which looked a lot more like the more traditional British seaside fare. As we came closer, my hopes were met with a welcome sight. A proper U.K. seaside bin, adorned with the genuine article - a dyed in the wool, 24 carat, Keep Britain Tidy Man, nicely picked out in gold Hammerite. Shooing the gulls from their endless mission to cover Falmouth in a uniform carpet of rubbish, I stuck my head in the bin, and breathed deep of its vapours. Sure enough, there it was; the deep, vinegary, chip papery smell I remembered from years before. The Man would have winked at me, if he'd had eyes. Did I climb in? Errr, well no actually. Even I have to draw the line somewhere.

When Will it End?
Having carried out my pilgrimage to Falmouth, it's calmed down now.

Loose Ends
The following loose ends still remain. If you can answer them, please contact me.