1993

Top Selling Singles

1. Meat Loaf – I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)
2. UB40 – (I Can’t Help) Falling in Love with You
3. Ace of Base – All That She Wants
4. 2 Unlimited – No Limit
5. Gabrielle – Dreams
6. Mr Blobby – Mr Blobby
7. Shaggy – Oh Carolina
8. Haddaway – What Is Love
9. Culture Beat – Mr. Vain
10. Whitney Houston – I Will Always Love You

Christmas No.1: Mr Blobby – Mr Blobby

Top Selling Albums

1. Meat Loaf – Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell
2. R.E.M. – Automatic for the People
3. Dina Carroll – So Close
4. Take That – Everything Changes
5. Diana Ross – One Woman: The Ultimate Collection
6. Bryan Adams – So Far So Good
7. UB40 – Promises and Lies
8. Phil Collins – Both Sides
9. U2 – Zooropa
10. Mariah Carey – Music Box

At the Box Office

1. Jurassic Park
2. The Fugitive
3. Aladdin
4. The Bodyguard
5. Indecent Proposal
6. Bram Stoker’s Dracula
7. A Few Good Men
8. The Firm
9. Cliffhanger
10. Sleepless In Seattle

Cost of Living

Average house price	£55,000
Average salary	£17,500
Average car price	Escort 1.3 Popular: about £8,000
Petrol	45p / litre
Pint of beer	£1.39
Packet of 20 Cigarettes	£2.27
Pint of milk	34p

In the News

• Prime Minister – John Major
• The Bank of England lowers interest rates to 6% – the lowest since 1978.
• Murder of 2-year-old James Bulger by two ten-year-old boys on Merseyside
• The Ford Mondeo goes on sale
• Vauxhall launches its all-new Corsa supermini, the replacement for the long-running Nova
• Staples, the American office superstore chain, opens its first store in Swansea.
• A false start forces the Grand National to be cancelled. The race results are made void for the first time in history
• Child Support Agency begins operation.
• London teenager Stephen Lawrence is stabbed to death at Eltham in south London while waiting for a bus.
• The Queen announces that Buckingham Palace will open to the public for the first time
• Hollbeck Hall Hotel in Scarborough collapses into the sea following a landslide
• A high speed train makes the first journey from France to England via the Channel Tunnel
• The Department of Health reveals that the number of people on hospital waiting lists has reached One Million for the first time.
• QVC launches the first television shopping channel in the UK.
• John Major launches his Back to Basics campaign
• Women’s Royal Naval Service disbanded, its members being fully absorbed into the regular Royal Navy.
• Graham Taylor resigns as manager of the England football team after three years in charge
• The Downing Street Declaration on the future of Northern Ireland is signed between the UK and Irish governments

On the Telly

• Tots TV makes its debut on ITV
• Debut of the Sunday morning current affairs series Breakfast with Frost
• ITV introduces a third weekly episode of The Bill on Friday evenings.
• After a 14-year absence, Celebrity Squares returns to ITV, with Bob Monkhouse
• BBC2 airs live coverage of the inauguration of Bill Clinton as the 42nd President
• An IRA bomb scare at BBC Television Centre means that the live Saturday night programme Noel’s House Party cannot be broadcast. Instead, Noel Edmonds is forced to introduce a Tom and Jerry cartoon in its place
• BBC1 broadcasts the final episode of its Saturday morning children’s series Going Live! which is replaced later in the year by Live & Kicking
• Debut on ITV of Peak Practice
• After ten years and ten series, the final edition of Blockbusters is broadcast on ITV
• Stars in Their Eyes returns on ITV with new presenter Matthew Kelly who takes over the role from Leslie Crowther
• BBC1 airs the final episode of Eldorado it was axed due to poor ratings.
• Debut of Supermarket Sweep on ITV, presented by Dale Winton.
• Anne Robinson makes her debut as presenter of Watchdog on BBC1.
• Patsy Palmer makes her EastEnders debut as the long-running character Bianca Jackson. Ricky!!

In Music

• The Bluebells’ 1984 single Young at Heart reaches number one in the UK Singles Chart following a re-release after being featured in a Volkswagen Golf advert. It tops the charts for four weeks.
• Ireland’s Niamh Kavanagh wins the Eurovision Song Contest (staged in the Republic of Ireland) with “In Your Eyes”, beating the United Kingdom’s Sonia, who sang “Better the Devil You Know”, by 23 points.

Top Selling Christmas Toys

• Barbie / Action Man £10
• Talkboy – a hand-held voice recorder £25

Gadgets

• The first smartphone “IBM Simon” is released as a concept phone.
• Intel introduces the Pentium Processor.
• Apple Newton MessagePad (PDA)
• Nokia 101
• Sony MiniDisc

Script

• 🎙️ “The average UK house price was around £54,000… and a litre of petrol cost about 45p.”
• 🎙️ “The biggest-selling single in the UK was I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That) by Meat Loaf.”
• 🎙️ “People were amazed by the brand-new ‘multimedia PCs’ with CD-ROM drives.”
• 🎙️ “A pint of beer in the UK cost around £1.50.”
• 🎙️ “The UK charts were packed with acts like Take That, UB40 and Ace of Base.”
• 🎙️ “This was the year Jurassic Park changed cinema special effects forever.”
• 🎙️ “Most people still recorded TV shows onto VHS tapes.”
• 🎙️ “The average UK annual salary was around £17,000.”
• 🎙️ “One of the coolest gadgets around was the portable CD player with anti-skip protection.”
• 🎙️ “People rented movies from Blockbuster LLC almost every weekend.”
• 🎙️ “The first episode of The X-Files aired and quickly became a cult hit.”
• 🎙️ “Mobile phones were getting smaller — but they still cost a fortune to use.”
• 🎙️ “A brand-new Ford Mondeo was one of the most talked-about new cars on UK roads.”
• 🎙️ “People were using floppy disks to save schoolwork and computer games.”
• 🎙️ “Fashion meant denim shirts, bomber jackets, crop tops and grunge-inspired looks.”
• 🎙️ “The launch of the Eurotunnel rail link was one of Europe’s biggest engineering stories.”
• 🎙️ “One of the hottest Christmas presents was the Sega Mega Drive.”
• 🎙️ “A cinema ticket in the UK cost around £3.50.”
• 🎙️ “People checked football scores on Ceefax and Teletext before the internet became mainstream.”
• 🎙️ “Music fans were buying albums like Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell and Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?.”