Record collector Steve Goldman has compiled a book to follow up a quirky exhibition he launched in Huddersfield ‘celebrating’ the worst record covers ever designed.

Steve, 56, of Golcar, found a bizarre hit with his exhibition ‘The Worst Record Covers in The World’ in the Piazza centre in November 2021.

The exhibition made national news and some of Steve’s favourite covers even appeared in the BBC show ‘Have I Got News for You?’

Now Steve and co-writer Simon Robinson are about to publish ‘The Art of The Bizarre Vinyl Sleeve’ and Steve was delighted when his favourite stand-up comedian Stewart Lee agreed to write the foreword – and found he HATED the book!

The book, which is available to pre-order on the Easy On the Eye Books website and costs £18.99, launches on November 16 at The Williamson Gallery in Birkenhead.

In the foreword Stewart writes: “I love records and I’m professionally obliged, as a stand-up comedian, to see the funny side of things, and so when they asked me to write a few hundred words introducing ‘The Art of The Bizarre Record Sleeve’ I thought it would be fun. But I was wrong. Very wrong.

“The relentless low quality and relentlessly poor aesthetic choices of the sleeves made me despair of humanity itself. Up to a point kitsch is funny, then it begins to speak of our collective failure to understand true beauty, and makes me feel sickened to my soul.

“I began to hate this whole project, and specifically the men behind it, Steve Goldman, whose collection the book represents, and Simon Robinson, who has corralled it into some kind of shape.”

Steve said: “We were thrilled to receive Stewart’s inimitable prose with some of his favourite picks from the collection featured in the book.

“To have my favourite stand-up comedian write that he hates me and Simon in the foreword to our own book is a rare privilege. It’s truly a once in a lifetime experience!”

Steve has more than 200 awful album covers in his own collection and he’s bought them from car boot sales, fairs and the internet.

“To get in my collection the album covers have to be unintentionally funny,” he said. “I want records where the designers have tried to do something that’s gone horribly wrong.”

Steve Goldman with his collection at the Shambala Festival. Image by: Ania Shrimpton