Our first "timeslip moment" of this new decade is upon us - and we've escaped from John Travolta in a rubber suit to land ourselves in the first month of the decade-before-last, the Millennium year, 2000!
Yes, it's the mythical "Y2K" - the year of the murders of Victoria Climbié and Sarah Payne, Air France Concorde crash and the grounding of Concordes in France and the UK, the conviction of the Admiral Duncan nail-bomber David Copeland, "the wobbly bridge", Lorraine Heggessey, fuel protests, AOL, American Psycho, an abortive attempt to steal a prize diamond from the Millennium Dome in London, Billy Elliot, the Human Genome Project, HM Queen Mum's 100th birthday, Sydney Olympics, Slobodan Milošević, Big Brother, The Beach, May Day riots in Central London, furore over the imprisonment of farmer Tony Martin for shooting dead a burglar, Elián González, Al-Qaeda, Nigerian fuel pipeline disaster, Ken Livingstone, Kenneth Noye, the International Space Station, Chicken Run, Tate Modern, vigilante riots in Portsmouth whipped up by tabloid "paedophile" scaremongering, earthquakes in Sumatra and Sulawesi, and the ILOVEYOU computer virus; the births of the Eden Project, Popbitch, Øresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden, The Sims, TripAdvisor, PlayStation 2 and the Croydon Tramlink; and the year that Ian Dury, Kirsty MacColl, Walter Matthau, Hedy Lamarr, Dame Barbara Cartland, Julie London, Gwen Verdon, Tito Puente, Hugh Paddick, Ofra Haza, Sir John Gielgud, Doris Hare, Sir Alec Guinness, Paula Yates, Charles M. Schulz, Richard Mulligan, Sir Stanley Matthews, Victor Borge, Sir Robin Day, Charles Gray, Loretta Young, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Roger Vadim and Reggie Kray all died.
In the headlines in January twenty years ago? Dr. Harold Shipman was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering fifteen of his patients (but the estimated toll was nearer 250), Prime Minister Tony Blair's missus Cherie Booth was fined for fare-dodging on a train, two British women explorers reached the South Pole, Chilean General Augusto Pinochet was deported from the UK for human rights violations, and Scottish trawler the Solway Harvester sank in the Irish Sea killing all seven crew. In our cinemas: Sleepy Hollow, Angela's Ashes, The Bone Collector. On telly: Gormenghast , Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, and "Raquel" returned for a one-off episode of Coronation Street.
And in our charts? Early 2000 did not really have much in the way of memorable music, and certainly continued in the "same old, same old" vein this week - with 90s boyband Westlife (yuk) at the top, and popstrels S-Club 7, Steps and Vengaboys all in the Top 5. Xmas "hangovers" from Cliff-bloody-Richard and Mr Hankey the Christmas Poo were slowly retreating, as was the reissued Imagine by John Lennon. Club hits by Alice Deejay, Cuban Boys, Craig-bloody-David and Willam Orbit made up the rest of the crowd - but, after a slight slip over the festive fortnight, this song [a "one-hit-wonder"] was heading back into the Top Ten again to cheer us all up...
Faboo!
