‘Gladiators needed to happen to Saturday night television in the same way punk needed to happen to music in the late ’70s…’
Of all the many topics I have flogged to death over all these wasted years of writing, the 90s is the one that has occupied the most space. As a child of the greatest decade, I was utterly obsessed with pop culture. Britpop, grunge, Tarantino, Trainspotting, Sunny Delight. All the big guns. This monomaniacal infatuation has, worryingly, only increased as time has gone by. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. And so, when Quickly Kevin Will He Score? came out – a podcast dedicated to 90s football – it felt as if it were made just for me. Evidently, based on its popularity, many other people felt the same way too. Along with Michael Marden and Chris Stark, Josh Widdicombe has hosted Quickly Kevin since its inception in 2017, and as with Marden and Stark, Widdicombe is perhaps the only person in the world more obsessed with the 90s than I am. This has naturally led to Widdicombe’s love letter to the 90s – Watching Neighbours Twice a Day…: How ’90s TV (Almost) Prepared Me for Life – and what a love letter it is…
Chronicling his formative years through the medium of television, the secret to Watching Neighbours… success is in the detail. While Widdicombe hovers over cultural touchstones like Noel’s House Party and the eponymous Australian classic Neighbours, he also finds time to namecheck more obscure TV shows such as El Dorado and You Bet.
As with his appearances on Quickly Kevin, Widdicombe’s encyclopaedic knowledge of all things 90s really shines through here and this ensures that Watching Neighbours… is able to paint with broad strokes one minute and with an obsessive attention to detail the next. This is more than simply an exercise in nostalgia however (although it is that), it also works as an autobiography, of sorts. A roadmap demonstrating how a nerdy kid who grew up in the middle of nowhere became a household name with wonderful hair.
You might think after all these years that I may have run out of things from the 90s to feel nostalgic about. This book has worryingly convinced me that I’m just getting started. My efforts so far have simply been the tip of the iceberg. Now, if anyone needs me I’ll be watching Round the Twist whilst relaxing in a bath of Sour Nerds.