MAMAMIA! ABBA WE’VE GONE -SOLUTELY BONKERS!
Mo devotes life to Supergroup
BACK in the seventies, posters of Abba were plastered on every teenager’s wall. Millions of youngsters kept their transistors pressed to their ears 24-7, eager to hear their latest records. Most of those pop devotees have since grown up and moved on, barely giving their youthful idols a second thought during the intervening three-and-a-half decades since the Swedish group’s last hit. But one tragic superfan has devoted her whole life to Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny and Anni-Frid, and has in the process wasted the best part of her allotted span amassing an utterly pointless collection of Abba memorabilia.
MoPlain, 54, told us: “While all my friends have got married, started families and pursued successful and fulfilling careers, I’ve been working on my Abba collection.”
tat
At the last count, tragic Mo, who lives alone in the Wednesbury, West Midlands house where she was born, had over 40,000 items in her unofficial Abba museum. From LPs and singles to annuals, mugs, signed photographs and dolls, if it’s got anything to do with her Swedish idols, she’s probably got it somewhere in the worthless stockpile of tat that stands as a testament to her pitifully squandered time on earth.
knife
“I get up at half-past five to get my collection dusted before breakfast time,” she told us. “It takes me at least three hours every morning. Then I hit eBay and start searching for new Abba treasures.”
“Being Abba’s number one fan is like a full time job for me,” she added. “There’s no time for anything else.”
“I’ve currently got my eye on an Abba picnic box and flask, an Abba colour-changing pen, and a lock of Bjorn’s hair,” she said. Mo reckons she must have spent more than half a million pounds on memorabilia over the past four decades, money that could have funded a lavish lifestyle of international jetsetting, including round-the-world cruises, first class air travel and stays in luxury five-star hotels.
fingers
Experts recently valued Mo’s collection at £150 to £200. “I don’t care what my museum is worth, because it’s literally priceless to me,” she said. “I’m not interested in selling it anyway. When I go, I’m leaving the whole lot to my sister in Australia. Like me, she’s a big Abba fan.”
When we contacted Miss Plain’s sister Doreen, who lives in Melbourne, she told us: “I don’t want all that shite cluttering my house up. I’ll just get some local firm to put the lot in a skip and then sell the house.”