We are about to take a deep dive into the best decade of them all. The one with the best kids tv, the dawn of the new technological age and a time when Ireland came into its own on the international stage. Let’s go back to the 90s.
Blur or Oasis? Do you know how to give yourself a dead arm? Do you know all the words to the Cork Button Factory song? If you were growing up in Ireland in the 90s, this was all information you had better have to hand.
Couple this with nightly terror dreams about The Morbegs, (Giant Muppet-type creatures derived from the Irish words mór, meaning big, and beag, meaning small, who lived in a castle like Enya, for some reason), and our plate was pretty full.
However, we would all go back in a heartbeat, wouldn’t we? We grew up in the 90s and here’s a few signature memories that prove that we did.
12. Xtravision – be kind, rewind
The giddy excitement of rocking up to Xtravision on Saturday afternoon is etched in our memory. Giant tubs of toffee popcorn that we could only get in that one shop. Giant bags of minstrels that we could only get either there or at the cinema.
Rows and rows of videos that had plastic sleeves that stank of other renter’s second hand cigarette smoke.
The plastic seemed to wear that smell like a second skin. We could only pick two, so the selection process was like a UN negotiation.
This was a perilous endeavour. A wrong selection could ruin the entire weekend. Jurassic Park was a given, but what do you pair Jurassic Park with? The Land Before sodding Time?
Although, to be fair, no regrets there. Great soundtrack. These days we’re just in our gaffs scrolling through Netflix, wasting most of the night and getting charged for it and now? We don’t even get a giant tub of toffee popcorn in the end. Netflix has got nothing on Xtravision.
11. Ballykissangel – weird priest feels
Fancying a telly priest was weird, wasn’t it? They threw a big tall, ridey priest at us out of nowhere in the shape of actor, Stephen Tompkinson and we felt all squirrely and odd because he was, quite frankly, fit.
And he wanted to get it on with Assumpta in the tiny wee village of Ballykissangel, scandalizing the entire Glen of the Downs in Avoca, County Wicklow.
Ireland and sex has always been a bit of a weird one, but throw a sexy priest into the mix and it’s a wonder the entire country didn’t catch light and just explode itself.
Pretty sure there were angry phone calls to Joe Duffy and much rosary bead clutching but somehow, we survived. We endure.
10.Glenroe – I’ve got a case of the roes, lads
The music that was like a dagger in our hearts on a Sunday night. The death knell of the weekend. It still induces some form of PTSD in us. Now known as “A case of the Roes.”
Never mind Miley Byrne and his hanky panky with Fidelma in the hay shed, and that was traumatic enough. We would have forgiven his wife, Biddy, for taking a pitchfork to him. How could you do that, Miley? We shall never forgive.
It was a great show that ran from 1983 to 2001. A whole lifetime. And who can forget Dinny Byrne, played by Joe Lynch who turned out to the be the voice actor for the character of Grundel in the animated film Thumbelina in 1994. Well, holy god!
9. Eurovision – We Are The Champions My Friend
Pride. Irish pride. That was a thing that existed in the 90s. To be honest, winning so many Eurovisions gave us notions. We started to believe in hope. A slippery hope.
Linda Martin – boom. Niamh Kavanagh – boom. Paul Harrington and Charlie McGettigan – double boom. Eimear Quinn with her haunting pipes – boom. We just could not stop winning. We were haunting ourselves.
We were cheering in our own houses – unheard of in this country. And then that wee American and the ginger girl in Riverdance with the RTE Concert Orchestra made the entire auditorium stand up and roar in 1994. We all know where we were at that moment.
It’s like JFK and the grassy knoll, but happy. That rapid song ending, the beat of the silence and then that euphoric cheer from the crowd. Even our da was teary. Magic. We had to stop winning eventually, though.
8. Father Ted – quoting whole episodes verbatim
The opening theme was a like a lovely cuppa tea, made us all warm and comforted. The Divine Comedy could not have composed a more beautiful melody and it defined growing up in 90’s Ireland. It was the theme of our entire childhood.
Such gems as; “Would ya believe me own dog did that to me?!”, “Get away from me! I don’t want to catch the menopause!”
Or when Tom robbed the Post Office and Ted asked him if he was up to his old tricks again. “No, Father. It’s my money. I just didn’t want to fill in the forms.”
There we were the next day on the playground quoting every line at each other, dressing up as Father Jack for the end of year school play. The one time of year you could get away with saying “feck” in school. Happy days.
7. Public phone cards – have ya got your callcard
A true sign of being a 90s child was having to buy an Eir Callcard from the Newsagents because we had to ring from down the street every few hours to let our mammy know where we were and be threatened with mild acts of mammy-violence upon our person if we didn’t arrive home on time.
They became our collectors items – our kind of Pokemon Trading Cards before they were born. Even if we didn’t need one, we would have to get the Paddy’s Day one. The Zig and Zag one was almost a must.
Missing out on the Boyzone one was a kind of trauma that never leaves us. We could have made a fortune on some of the rarer ones – which people collect like rare antiques online, these days.
Ringing the number on the back and Ronan Keating would ask you three questions and if you got it right, that was £1,000 (one thousand Irish punts) worth of Michael Stein Travel vouchers for you, my lucky friend!
6. Mobile Phones – don’t touch my Snake score
The Nokia 3210. The old faithful, it never let us down. When mobiles first dropped they were cheap and made us feel all grown up and independent. They did for the Eir Phone Cards, then. RIP Callcard.
We felt like one of them oil magnates in Dallas, going around making deals on the phone (ringing our Ma, asking what’s for dinner.)
“Can I borrow your phone?” our mate would say, and we would reluctantly lend it to them, but only under the strict proviso that they do not touch the game Snake, because if they messed with our Snake top score, we might have to take steps that would involve child violence.
Would not be at all surprising to find an old Nokia 3210, switch it on and find it still works like a charm. Great bit of kit.
5. Pogs – round discs of pictorial fun
What was a Pog? Well, having to describe one certainly is a blatant sign of growing up in the 90s. Pogs were a kind of circular playground currency.
We might have a Chupa Chups Pog and our mate Paul has an Alf Pog (Alf was a furry alien who lived on Earth) and Paul might like Chupa Chups but we like Alf and a trade could be made, business handshakes and everything.
Pog flipping was a big thing. Whoever can flip the Pog so it lands picture-side up the most times, won. There was also Pog-slamming, where you’d slam one person’s pog off another pog and hope for the same outcome.
The days of Pog are well-remembered but there was always one wee weirdo with too many Pogs.
4. Confection compensation – my Fanta has a floater
It might have been the birth of Irish Compo Culture but we’ll never truly know.
A sure sign that you grew up in Ireland in the 90’s is that you knew someone who wrote to companies like Coca Cola or Pepsi or Cadbury’s or even Tayto because they got a bad bag of crisps or their Coke tasted weird or the chocolate was gone off when they opened it.
And do you know what those companies would do back then? They would send whole boxes of crisps or soft drink or chocolate to compensate for the unpleasantness.
It’s still hard to believe, in this current age of Corporate-Couldn’t Care Less-Shruggery but the 90’s was a different time. Things actually mattered then.
Your friend’s birthday party might have a curiously large amount of never-ending Fanta cans on the go. She was on the can compo!
3. Podge and Rodge – a scare at bedtime
Those of us that grew up in 90’s Ireland were introduced to a strange wee wrong’un on The Den with Zig and Zag and Zuppy. Podge was always up to no good, skulking around, causing trouble and the only one who ever knew the real Podge, the bold Podge, was Zuppy. He knew what was up.
Podge proved so popular that he was given his own late-night show, coupled with a brother, Rodge who told us wonderfully (often genuinely scary) stories at bedtime. This was a more adult affair but our parents never figured that out, so we got to enjoy it.
Brought to us from the eerie confines of Ballydung Manor, a former Asylum, we were introduced to characters such as The Quare Fella, Granny and Pádraig Judas O’Leprocy.
It gave us a lifelong love of all things Irish and spooky!
2. Italia 90 Nostaglia – honour The Bonner
What was that strange tingly feeling in our spines back then? An odd, almost un-Irish feeling. Oh, yeah, it was pride, and we were not used to it. Because Ireland was doing mighty at the football. We were actually winning things.
The more matches we won in the two World Cups we remember qualifying for, the more those matches became family moments, street neighbour moments we will never forget. Down the pub with the whole family, sipping Britvic 95 and watching grown Irish men crying with joy. Unforgettable.
Getting a plastic hammer in the Irish flag colours confiscated because we wouldn’t stop hitting our siblings with it. Can’t beat those memories.
1. The internet – why is it screaming
The internet came into our lives like an alien landing from the moon. We could even see the moon, close up on Encarta 95! Encarta 95 was like Wikipedia but better. We got many a homework essay done with Encarta, long before AI ruined everything.
The Net came screaming (literally) as it connected to the landline sounding like a dying thing, a thing in pain. Looking back on it, that scream was the sound of the 90’s dying. It was the sound of old ways being violently killed off by modernity.
Ah, the lovely rows they caused when we’d be talking to our friends on MSN messenger only for our Mammies to ruin it by telling us to “Get off that net, I need to use the landline to call your Aunty Pat!” Many a door was slammed. Would not change it for the world.
And here we slam the door on our trip down Nostalgia Lane to 90’s Ireland. It was a wild time of country growing up, taking pride in itself, embracing the future and discovering who we are.
We miss it.
