It was hour eight or nine of a multiday YouTube binge and the algorithm was serving me hit after hit. Newcastle United’s heroic, almost Premier League-winning season. Michael Heseltine deputising for John Major at Prime Minister’s Questions. Monica from Friends declaring herself to be “breezy” following her break-up with Richard — when she was anything but.
The thread holding these seemingly disparate clips together is their timing — each originally aired in the mid to late Nineties, the period just before I became conscious of the world around me. Annoyingly, I was only a few months old when the Berlin Wall fell so I can neither recall nor take any credit for it. And I was 11 on 9/11 so I can remember in minute detail the smells, sounds and shock that permeated the rolling news coverage.
