John Buckley, banker
"I don't know how many records I have, but I know I spend an awful lot of time - and, more to the point, money - in record shops. I buy everything. I listen to everything. It started off with what my mam and dad listened to, which was Elvis, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. I was reared on the glams but I'll listen to drum'n'bass, Propellerhead - and I'm an REM fanatic. That's where you get into the area of the completist. I've got everything REM have ever done, even when they've guested for other people. If I can't get something here I get it by mail order from the US. The Internet? Too frustrating. You wouldn't buy clothes on the Internet, would you? You need someone you can trust in a record shop, somebody who'll say, `do you know something, that's not a great album, John, put it back'. "I go on football trips and spend hours and hours in record stores abroad - I'm going to Barcelona next week and two months ago I was in Milan, where they put the wrong records in the sleeves by mistake, so that I arrived home with a Beatles record in a Ray Charles sleeve. Now that I'm 40 jazz is a big thing with me - let's face it, I'm not gonna play that many rock records in the sitting-room any more. I also go running. I hate running, but I'm the only guy in the park with a smile on his face, because when I go running I'm actually listening to a new album on the Walkman."
Donal Dineen, radio presenter
"I couldn't really say how many records I have - let's say a vast collection, built up over many years in different cities and different countries. People talk about the trainspotter-ish qualities of record buyers, but I think record shops are amazing. They're full of treasure. Personally speaking I have no regard for details like what label something is on, or where it comes in the sequence of a discography or anything like that, and I've never gone into a shop with a catalogue number - honest! I'm a big fan of smaller shops because even though the megastores have their purposes, credit is due to the smaller shops for just surviving and for getting to know their market. I find that people are really interested now in ethnic music, folk music, acoustic music, that sort of thing - they've have been encouraged by the print media to follow a line of inquiry away from the commercial mainstream and back towards the origins of pop music in rhythm and blues, and that's really good. "To me great music is great music. I think it's wrong to say that somebody who buys the Spice Girls doesn't have as much taste as somebody who buys the latest album that gets great reviews in a really cool magazine. People buy music because it makes them happy, and I have no problem with really popular things. But at the same time I think it's important to do a radio programme [Here Comes The Night, 9 p.m. on Today FM] that doesn't have any barriers as regards what can be played. The danger with formatted radio or play-listed music television is that it becomes a very narrow avenue in which it seems like music is all derived from the same source, which is not the case at all. The beauty of being a music fan is that there's never an end to what you can find that will provide you with a lot of happiness and pleasure."
Dave Hughes, head of marketing, Telecom International
"I started when I was 14, buying the Ramones - ska, Lizzy, that sort of thing. Now I have about 700 to 800 CDs, probably a little bit more. They're all over the place; the CDs are spread between the living-room and the bedroom, a lot of the vinyl is just buried under the stairs in boxes. I buy a reasonable amount of new stuff - I got the Massive Attack album a few weeks ago; the Ry Cooder album, the Cuban one; Deep Dish, the house album. I work out of town now but when I go into town for a meeting or a late pint, I usually buy about five or six albums. "Has my taste changed - yeah, from week to week! I started off with heavy rock, then went through the whole punk thing and then basically got into a lot of blues and reggae stuff, obscure reggae dub albums. I've been through a load of strange phases, but I don't think I could categorise myself now. I think that's my age. I'm not so preoccupied with what's cool or not cool - I mean, Massive Attack are excellent but I wouldn't be bothered looking for a whole load of Bristol bands or trying to find every Tricky album that ever came out. I'm not into vinyl now at all. CDs are much handier, even for storage. I play an odd album on vinyl, but I find it strange having to jump up after 20 minutes and switch it over. I have a reasonably good system, but I never got into woofers and tweeters and all that."
Coman Morrissey, retired engineer
"I started when I was eight and got 20 dollars from a priest in America - I went into Piggotts and bought Peter Dawson singing Now Your Days of Philandering Are Over because they didn't have the Miserere by Webster Booth and Joan Cross in stock. I'd listen to anything, but opera is my great love. I now have 2,000-plus CDs, about 1,000 LPs and 700 or 800 laser discs. Recently I got the new Pioneer player which plays laser discs, CDs, CD-Roms and Digital Versatile Discs, and I've just installed a seven-foot screen for watching operas - with motorised curtains! I'm the envy of every nine-year-old in Dublin! "Last Thursday I went on the Internet and contacted a new crowd called DVD Express, who had some stuff in stock that I wanted; it was the first time I put my credit card on the Internet so on Sunday night, just out of curiosity, I went into the tracking of Federal Express to check up on it. I got a printout which said the discs had left the Hollywood Boulevard at 4 o'clock, were in Memphis Tennessee by 3 o'clock the following morning and on the ramp at Stansted by 10 o'clock the next day. They were delivered here on Monday morning. That's a fantastic service. "I was making amplifiers as a student and I understand the debate about sound quality - there's an oiliness, a glycerine feel to analogue that you don't get on CDs, even the very good ones - but I wouldn't have the patience to play analogue myself. I find CDs much handier. Anyway I have all the gadgets to put the analogue sound back in. I don't listen to much of today's rock or pop - I don't have time - but if you'd been outside the Theatre Royal when the first Teddy Boys arrived, with their chains - ah, it never leaves you. But the older you get, the more you stay with melody, I'm afraid. I got a delivery this morning of Donizetti's Poliuto with Corelli and Callas, and the Paul Robeson Moscow concert. Fabulous."
