Timeslip moment again...
We've crash-landed, not on Planet of the Apes, but in the not-so-distant-yet-still-unfamiliar world of 2001 - the year of the September 11th terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, equal age of consent in the UK, George Dubya Bush, foot-and-mouth disease, Michael Barrymore, Michael Owen, Paul Burrell, Brian Dowling, race riots in Bradford and Brixton, Deputy PM John Prescott punching a protester, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Slobodan Miloševic on trial, V. S. Naipaul, Victoria Climbié, Bridget Jones's Diary, Iain Duncan Smith, War in Afghanistan, Iraq disarmament crisis, "Who shot Phil Mitchell?", the release on licence of James Bulger's murderers Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, Jeffrey Archer, Can't Get You Out Of My Head, Tony Blair's second Labour landslide election win, Lily Savage hosting Blankety Blank, an earthquake in Gujarat that killed around 20,000 people, Shrek, Neil and Christine Hamilton, Hear'Say, Silvio Berlusconi, Barry George, Blue Planet, the Nepalese royal massacre, Robot Wars, picketing of Holy Cross Catholic school in Belfast, Peter Mandelson, Phoenix Nights, the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan by the Taliban, IRA disarmament, Major Ingram caught cheating on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, the takeover of TWA by American Airlines, David Beckham and Moulin Rouge; the births of Wikipedia, the Eden Project, the iPod, Cardiff Bay Barrage, Windows XP, Billie Eilish and HBOS plc; and the year that Jack Lemmon, George Harrison, Perry Como, Joan Sims, Harry Secombe, Dorothy Tutin, Douglas Adams, Swissair, Lord Hailsham, Nigel Hawthorne, Michael Williams, Charlotte Coleman, Lord Longford, Larry Adler, Christiaan Barnard, Sabena airlines, Don Bradman, Mary Whitehouse, Anthony Quinn, Aaliyah, Troy Donahue, Joey Ramone and Stuart Adamson of Big Country all died.
In the headlines in December 2001 - Roy Whiting was sentenced to a full-life prison term for the murder of Sarah Payne, the arrest of the "Shoe Bomber", Post Office cost-cutting plans including 30,000 redundancies, Enron bankruptcy, terrorist attack on the Indian parliament, riots in Argentina, and the murder of former BBC newsreader Lynette Lithgow in Trinidad. In our cinemas: Zoolander, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring , The Princess Diaries. On telly: Walking with Beasts, Richard & Judy, The Kumars at No. 42.
And in our charts this week eighteen years ago? Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman's cover of Something Stupid had just crashed into the top slot, where it would stay for Xmas and into the New Year, shunting Daniel Bedingfield and Miss Sophie Ellis Bexter down to #2 and #3 respectively. Also present and correct were Stereophonics, S Club 7 and Samantha Mumba, and (inevitably) there were novelty songs from Tweenies and Hermes House Band [nope - me neither] to contend with. Despite all the usual fare it's obvious that the dance genre known as Trance was still popular, with Ivan Van Dahl straight into the top five, and this one - which I had quite forgotten about...
I feel dizzy.
I bought that PPK Resurrection on single! Listening to it now, I don't know why I bothered? Although, I seem to remember some of the mixes were pretty good...
ReplyDeleteShouldn't George Dubya Bush have been followed by Foot IN Mouth rather than Foot AND Mouth?
Most dance choons that ended up in the charts were the cut-down "Radio Edit" versions rather than the more familiar ones we danced to in the clubs...
Delete...and as for the Dubya, it should probably have read "foot up arse".
Jx