Visit nostalgia-land where craic is 90s
MURDER On The Dancefloor topping the charts, Gladiators back on TV and half the lads in Ireland are rocking mullets and shell suits.
Friends is the biggest sitcom on TV and streaming and you wouldn’t be surprised to turn on the Six One News and find Charles J Haughey had risen from the dead and was mobilising the Country n’ Western wing of Fianna Fail to contest the next General Election.
Yes folks, it’s like we’re travelling back in time to a happier place, where the chart hits are familiar, where the TV is fun and cosy and people aren’t burning down country hotels due to rumours that foreigners might be staying in them.
And to be fair, who could blame us for wanting a bit of heart-warming nostalgia?
If only we’d known back in the 90s that we were hitting some sort of sweet spot, with Ireland starting to become a prosperous, confident European country, housing still affordable
and our national soccer team regularly qualifying for World Cups and Euros.
Forget the Book of Kells and the land of saints & scholars, the real high point of Irish civilisation was around the summer of 2002, when we could get to a World Cup knock-out stage without Roy Keane, housing was still affordable and we hadn’t completely lost our heads with the Celtic Tiger.
Those were the days, my friend. We thought they’d never end.
Imagine telling somebody back then that at some point in the future, we’d have to close every pub in Ireland for a year and most of us would be spending 75% of our earnings trying to keep a roof – of any kind – over their heads.
They say that nostalgia ain’t what it used to be – but even the kids who were barely born when Sophie Ellis Bextor first hit with Murder On The Dancefloor are digging (I believe that’s how they say it) the 90s and Noughties.
Simpler, better, happier times – when it wasn’t like the whole world was firing bombs at each other.
If Mary Lou Mcdonald wants to wrap up the next election, she needs to make that “I’m Blue Ba-ba-ba-baba-dee” tune Sinn Fein’s official election song and ask her hairdresser for a Jennifer Aniston.