1993: The Year That Went Full Blobby

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.

Say hello to 1993 — the year Mr Blobby stormed the charts, Beavis and Butt-Head hit the telly, and Britain teetered gloriously between grunge and girl power.

This was the year we couldn’t escape Jurassic Park (and didn’t want to), Sleepless in Seattle made us cry into our Viennetta, and Blind Date was still the height of romantic aspiration. Politically, John Major was still hanging in there, but so was the hangover from Black Wednesday, and even the Queen admitted it hadn’t been a great time lately.

But never mind that — Take That had Relight My Fire, Meat Loaf wouldn’t do that (whatever “that” was), and Whitney was still belting ballads no one else could quite match. Meanwhile, The X-Files made us believe, Men Behaving Badly fully hit its stride, and The Word continued to corrupt a generation one late Friday at a time.

From shell suits to slow dances, cassette singles to catalogue shopping, 1993 captures a nation muddling through with big hair, bigger tunes, and a surprising amount of custard pies.

1993 — the year we didn’t take too seriously, and that was exactly the point.