I’ll admit that products with the U2 name on them have been somewhat sparse over the last little while. Over the past 38 some odd years, U2 have been responsible for at least semi-regular releases, many of which have come in a plethora of formats and variations, giving collectors like myself a whole lot to keep us busy.

Even outside of official CDs and records bearing the U2 logo, each of the band members have made appearances with plenty of other artists; then we’ve got bootlegs of all those hundreds of concerts (both video and audio), and enough paraphernalia to keep even those of us with unlimited time and money (I’m definitely not in the latter category) scouring the interwebs for a never-ending stream of products, from books to t-shirts, posters to coffee mugs, and tour programs to inflatable lemons and even the odd prophylactic.

I’m proud of my U2 collection; as my wife often says, it “keeps me off the streets”, and I’ve spent the better part of my 37 years building it. Sure, there’s plenty of stuff that I’m missing, but I’ve also got a few things that not many others do, and there’s really no better feeling for an obsessive collector. Now, I’m just waiting for news of the new album and it’s accompanying singles – that ought to keep me busy for a few months, anyway –  although probably not as long as it’s taken the band to get them to us.