TTYF! SICK REVIEW OF THE
YEAR /
DECADE/ CENTURY/ MILLENNIUM 1999
Written mostly by
Kevin Warne (KNW) with some less funny bits from John Harrington (JH)
1999, what a bargain sounding year as no end of "not so funny as
they think they are" writers quipped. Such a bargain in fact it only lasted nine
months for most of them as they scribbled their thoughts in September to catch the
deadlines for the January editions leaving themselves time for the endless polls and
reviews of the decade, century and millennium. Nice to know, in one poll, the teenagers of
this country, that font of considered wisdom, decided Robbie Williams was a more
influential musician these last thousand years than every classical composer bar Mozart.
It could have been worse, had the poll been conducted twenty-five years earlier Beethoven
et al would have been eating the dust of Donny or even Jimmy
Osmond.
It was a year that passed quickly in a world of ever faster change where
the advent of e-mail and the internet mean I feel
very old fashioned and dated waiting until Samoa has said farewell to the year before
writing about it. A review in the first week of January, what a slouch.
Politically it was the year the government of Tony the infallible
reached "mid-term" still riding high aided by the opposition of William the
hopeless. This, despite a failing health service and transport problems so severe Two Jags
Prescott had to create bus lanes on the motorways to allow our Tone to avoid them. It was
the year Michael Portillo, the man who provided one of our favourite images of the
twentieth century by getting ousted at the election (two years ago!), ended his wilderness
walk and, thanks to a considerate Allan Clarke, started his 2007 general election
campaign. Out of the closet
and out of the wilderness at the same time, a formidable achievement. The party he wants
to lead continued to crumble like the proverbial leper's handshake, a third world
organisation bankrolled from a third world tax haven.
The country suffered some shocks during the year; Jill Dando left large
numbers distraught at the thought of suffering Gaby Roslin on New Year's Eve and a Korean
jumbo caused grief in Essex when it crashed on take off from Stanstead but sadly missed
Harlow. The English cricket team restored some sense of normality by failing in the World
Cup and losing to the Kiwis. Meanwhile, in football, Manchester United added to the
nation's woe by winning the treble (FA Cup, Premiership and the European Runners-Up Cup)
and England manager Glenn Hoddle lost the plot by claiming "at this moment in time I
never said them things about those people". He was talking about the physically
impaired but not the England football team. His demise let in lucky Kevin Keagan, the man
who spent most of the year on planet Zog, the only place where they still think England
can win a major championship.  The
only man who ever has, Sir Alf Ramsey, died, not a wealthy man, shunned and appallingly
treated by the Football Association who nevertheless still shamelessly called on his long
ago triumph to suggest England should be seeded in Euro 2000.
Sir Alf: the most famous Essex boy ever?
Abroad, Clinton escaped impeachment and maintained a grip on the
presidency while another family dynasty finally lost any pretence of their's when John F
Kennedy Jnr crashed his plane. The usual rock throwing between India and Pakistan over the
Kashmir moved up a notch as both went nuclear and the Russians continued to beat up the
Chechens. We also had the obligatory Balkan war to keep the Western defence industry going
with the Chinese being taken out for a change instead of providing the take away.
The year had more than its fair share of disasters both natural and
man-made, perhaps a sign of more to come. Planes seem to fall out of the skies more
regularly than normal and a good year on the railways, safety wise, came to an abrupt end
just outside Paddington. The fact
that trains and planes are still several times safer than travelling by car did not stop
the "something must be done" merchants calling for millions of pounds to be
spent on making these modes of travel safer whilst the motorist is allowed to carry on
killing people and polluting the environment at an astonishing rate. (In fact statistics
indicate that if you spend your whole life in a plane you will live for 1,820 years).
 If you think the Paddington train crash was bad you obviously didn't see the
wedding photos of Posh and Becks or catch the staged romance between gingers Evans and
Haliwell. Which adaptation will evolve faster in humans: the bigger brain or the extra two
fingers lodged permanently down the throat?
Being the last year of everything there was a lot of tidying up. The
Germans and Japanese settled claims for past war crimes with the dwindling band of
surviving victims, except for British POWs because we need their investment (the Germans
and the Japs, not the POWs who remain a bloody nuisance and a drain on our resources).
Several other former colonial powers made muted apologies for past excesses but we are
still waiting for Arsenal to apologise for that awful green and blue away kit of several
years ago.
It was a better than average year on the deceased front. We had some
underrated female entertainers like Dusty Springfield and
Madeline Kahn pass on and a bumper crop of thespians. Bob Peck stalked his last dinosaur,
Oliver Reed quaffed his last drink, DeForest Kelly (Bones from Star Trek) announced
"I'm dead Jim" and Derek Nimmo laughed his last drain like laugh. Buster
Merryfield (Only Fools and Horses) went to the great tower block in the sky and Derrick
Guyler, long forgotten desert rat and janitor from Please Sir!, simply wore out according
to his relatives. George C Scott (Patton), Victor Mature and Dirk Bogarde added the
heavyweight dimension. Stanley Kubrick died as his last film was released.
Bones (well he is now)
"I'm dead, Jim"
At the lighter end Ernie Wise joined Eric and Johnny Morris took his
animal voices with him while Rod Hull killed himself helping Emu adjust the aerial during
a Manchester United game. This will doubtless lead to a pernnial quiz question: "In
what year did Hull go down as a result of Manchester United losing to Inter Milan."
(not to mention the joke: What does Rod Hull use to do his washing? Ariel, followed by
Bounce). Whilst almost on the subject of sport Payne Stewart, the golfer, died in a
bizarre flying accident which was harsh justice for the only US Ryder Cup team member who
seemed genuinely mortified by his team’s trampling on
the game’s traditions, and American greats Wilt "the Stilt" Chamberlain
(basketball) and Walter Payton (American Football) went too. In politics we wait years for
ex-politicians to go and then they snuff it as soon as we've forgotten they are still
around; Willie Whitelaw, the man who secretly negotiated with the IRA back in the eighties
while Ken Livingstone was slayed for publicly talking to them moved on. Joshua Nkomo led
the international field by some distance.
As for the future we had much talk of the internet revolution and the
arrival of e-commerce which offered opportunity for explosive growth in credit card fraud.
The mobile phone proliferated allowing people to fry their brains into a vegetative state
commiserate with the rubbish they were talking.
Thirty years ago the snake oil salesmen calling themselves scientist
predicted we would be either living on the moon or down here driving electric cars powered
by free electricity generated by clean safe nuclear power stations although as I recall
they didn't say much about home computers, mobile phones or the internet. Now they claim
they can see the day of the cloned humans and genetically modified babies and food. 1999
was the year the world human population passed six billion.
As the year came to an end I laid awake one night listening to another
of those increasingly frequent gales and thought of the natural disasters of the year;
earthquakes in Greece, Turkey, Taiwan and Columbia, floods in Europe and Venezuela,
avalanches in Austria, storms in Pakistan, here and America and drought across Africa.
Maybe, I thought, while this over confident ape arrogantly suggests it can almost play God
mother nature is flexing her muscles and clearing her throat ready for the new millennium
when she will start to deal with this plague on her planet.
And so to the awards |
