Britain In 1991 | We Lost a LEGEND and Gained MR BLOBBY!

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:02]Welcome to the retro roll back as we continue our series in the 1990s.

[00:00:08]And I'm sorry, but good news was hard to come by in this year.

[00:00:11]It's 1991. Let's go.

[00:00:18]January began with a new sitcom making its debut on BBC 1 as Chris Barrie took on the role of manager of a failing leisure center in the Brittas Empire.

[00:00:29]The show ran for seven series and 52 episodes until 1997.

[00:00:35]From the 17th of January, many scheduled TV programs were suspended to bring live coverage of the Gulf War after Allied Forces launched Operation Desert Storm against Iraq.

[00:00:47]Over the coming weeks, there was extended coverage of events in the Persian Gulf. Sky News presented round-the-clock coverage of the conflict and UK viewers were able to watch rolling live footage on CNN via satellite television.

[00:01:02]It was the first time live coverage of war was available to watch in the UK.

[00:01:08]January saw a real crash at Cannon Street Station in London, which killed one person and injured over 500. The inquiry cited a mixture of driver error and aging carriages as the cause.

[00:01:23]Britain was in recession as 1991 began and the impact on jobs was hitting the UK car industry hard.

[00:01:30]Peugeot made 300 workers redundant at their Ryton plant in Coventry, whilst Ford paid off 1,000 workers across the country.

[00:01:40]In what was a bleak start to the year for many, it wasn't just the car industry that suffered. Thousands of jobs were lost in the financial services sector as well with the total UK unemployment figure reaching 2 million.

[00:01:54]I told you there wasn't much good news around.

[00:01:58]February began with an attack on the UK government. The Provisional Irish Republican Army launched a mortar attack against 10 Downing Street blowing in all the windows of the cabinet room during a session of the war cabinet, but there were no injuries.

[00:02:14]But there was slight relief as Prime Minister John Major announced the abolition of a deeply unpopular community charge or poll tax.

[00:02:24]The 28th of March saw the verdict announced from the inquest into the Hillsborough disaster in 1989.

[00:02:30]A verdict of accidental death was reached on the Liverpool fans who died as a result of the tragedy.

[00:02:37]Many of the victims' families criticized the verdict in open court as many of them had been hoping for a verdict of unlawful killing, which was eventually obtained in 2016 or an open verdict. And for criminal charges to be brought against the police officers who commanded the match.

[00:02:57]Into April and it was all about the football. Plans were announced for a new super league of 18 clubs to replace the Football League First Division as the highest division of English football.

[00:03:08]The move was attacked by smaller Football League clubs who feared that they could go out of business if TV revenue was confined to the proposed Super League.

[00:03:18]On the 20th of April, a new channel launched that has since become the home of TV football in Britain.

[00:03:25]The sports channel rebranded to Sky Sports as we now know it and began showing the biggest football matches live and behind a paywall, making live football on terrestrial TV almost a thing of the past.

[00:03:39]Sticking with football and Arsenal were league champions as it was still the old First Division, whilst Manchester United beat Barcelona by two goals to one to lift the European Cup Winners' Cup, Mark Hughes scoring both goals in the match.

[00:03:56]There was silverware for Spurs as well as they won the FA Cup. Paul Stewart's and a Desmond Walker own goal were enough to get past Brian Clough's Nottingham Forest.

[00:04:07]In Scotland, Rangers narrowly won the league in a final day title decider against Aberdeen.

[00:04:13]Rangers also lifted the League Cup whilst Motherwell won the Scottish Cup against Dundee United in what was dubbed the family final as the managers of both clubs were brothers, Jim McLean as Dundee United boss and Tommy McLean as the manager of Motherwell.

[00:04:30]To June and there was a new car mark appearing on the roads for the first time.

[00:04:35]Kia, the Korean car company, began importing cars to the UK, initially the Kia Pride with more to follow through the decade. And petrol was only 40p a liter.

[00:04:48]On TV, the popular drama series Soldier Soldier made its debut on ITV starring Robson Green and Jerome Flynn. Such was their popularity, they went on to become a chart-topping pop duo later in the decade.

[00:05:03]Somehow.

[00:05:04]And a very creepy yet popular program reached its conclusion when the final episode of the hit show Twin Peaks aired on BBC 2.

[00:05:14]Too scary for me.

[00:05:16]Anyway, it's the halfway stage and time to take our average 1991 weekly wage of 241 pounds a week down to the shops and do a bit of spending.

[00:05:28]Buying a TV in 1991 was much more expensive than it is today and it was a time when buying a TV was beginning to become more popular than renting one.

[00:05:38]At Currys, you could get a 25-in Hitachi TV with Fastext no less for 460 pounds. Or you could get a TV and video recorder package for 715 pounds.

[00:05:53]And the latest hi-fi system would set you back 650 pounds.

[00:06:00]And if you still had any money left after that, you could head to Gateway for the weekly shop. 86 pence for a 4-pint bottle of milk and 29 pence for a loaf of bread.

[00:06:11]And they ask, can you really afford to shop elsewhere?

[00:06:15]Not if you just bought that TV and hi-fi.

[00:06:18]Back into July and we saw one of the year's biggest stories break with the closure of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International or the BCCI, which lost about 20 local councils across the UK up to 30 million pounds in investments. The bank, launched in 1972, had risen to being the world's seventh biggest bank.

[00:06:41]In better or scarier news, the ultimate steel roller coaster, Europe's longest, opened at Lightwater Valley Theme Park in North Yorkshire.

[00:06:52]It was officially opened by boxer Frank Bruno and held the record until the opening of Steel Dragon 2000 in Japan.

[00:07:00]And was built by British Rail Engineering.

[00:07:03]That's why the carriages were always late.

[00:07:06]It operated until the COVID pandemic in 2020 and has now been demolished.

[00:07:14]In August, Scottish runner Liz McColgan became the first British gold medalist at the World Athletics Championship in Tokyo. She took the women's 10,000 meters gold in a time of 31 minutes and 14.31 seconds only a few months after she gave birth to her daughter Eilish.

[00:07:34]John McCarthy, Britain's longest-held hostage in Lebanon, was finally set free after more than five years in captivity.

[00:07:43]The militant group Islamic Jihad, which had been holding the journalist, announced his release in a statement delivered to a news agency in the capital Beirut.

[00:07:52]McCarthy, who was abducted in April 1986, was one of around 11 Westerners believed to be held by Islamic Jihad or other militant groups. On the 6th of August 1991, Britain and the world had its first ever website.

[00:08:08]British internet inventor Tim Berners-Lee launched the first site, which was info.cern.ch.

[00:08:16]I'll put that on the screen now because the site's still live. Go and have a look after this video.

[00:08:22]Just a few days later, the first ever appearance of Steve Coogan's character Alan Partridge took place during the BBC Radio 4 show On the Hour. I am Alan [music] Partridge and this is my year of sport. And there was good news in August as the Bank of England announced that the worst of the recession, which had dogged most of 1991 in the UK, was now over.

[00:08:46]Into September and in response to the increasing numbers of rough sleepers on the streets of London, Gordon Roddick and John Bird launched the magazine The Big Issue.

[00:08:57]A then monthly magazine to be sold by homeless people, giving them the opportunity to earn a legitimate income, thereby helping them to reintegrate into mainstream society.

[00:09:08]It became the world's most widely circulated street newspaper.

[00:09:12]One of the 90s most popular British sitcoms launched in September, 2.4 Children, which starred Belinda Lang and Gary Olsen.

[00:09:21]It followed the lives of the Porters, an average working-class London family whose world is frequently turned upside down by bad luck and bizarre occurrences.

[00:09:32]It was all about the music in October and the song that had dominated the UK number one spot right through the summer was finally displaced.

[00:09:40]Bryan Adams' rock ballad Everything I Do, I Do It For You, which featured on the soundtrack of the hit movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, managed a record run of 16 consecutive weeks at number one before being toppled by the U2 hit The Fly.

[00:09:57]That takes us to November and with the rise of the internet, demand was on the rise for home computers. Enter new computer retailer PC World as they opened their first shop in Croydon and quickly opened many more across the UK.

[00:10:14]And Saturday nights meant a trip to Crinkley Bottom as Noel's House Party launched in an avalanche of gunge, gotchas, and of course the birth of Mr. Blobby.

[00:10:27]I told you it was a bad year.

[00:10:29]But it was a great year for gamers. Two of the world's most famous computer games launched in this year as Sonic the Hedgehog made his debut on the Sega console rivaling the recently released Super Mario on Nintendo.

[00:10:44]On the 5th of November, Robert Maxwell, owner of numerous business interests including Mirror Group Newspapers, was found dead off the coast of Tenerife.

[00:10:54]His cause of death was unconfirmed, but reports at the time suggested he had taken his own life.

[00:11:01]Then on the 25th of the month, the world of music lost a legend. Just one day after announcing his AIDS diagnosis to the world's press and much speculation surrounding his health, Queen frontman Freddie Mercury passed away at his home in London at the age of 45.

[00:11:18]Tributes poured in from fans and musicians across the world for a man widely regarded as one of the world's greatest musicians and entertainers.

[00:11:29]As December began, the Robert Maxwell business empire went into receivership with debts in excess of 1 billion pounds exactly 1 month after Robert Maxwell's death.

[00:11:41]The Daily Mirror reported that Maxwell had wrongly removed 350 million pounds from its pension fund shortly before he died.

[00:11:50]Then as Christmas approached, Bohemian Rhapsody returned to the top of the British singles charts after 16 years with the proceeds from the re-release being donated to the Terrence Higgins Trust in memory of the legend that was Freddie Mercury.

[00:12:06]And that was the year that was 1991 in Great Britain. Not the happiest of years, but if you like this video, do hit the like button and hit subscribe for notifications on future videos and browse our channel for more retro memories. Until next time, bye for now.