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You can hear Josh’s voice in the book (and no, I didn’t have the audiobook on at the same time) it is just written in his distinctive style. Using a different television show of the time as it's starting point for each chapter Watching the Nineties is part-childhood memoir, part-comic history of 90s television and culture. However, I am over six years older than him (he was born in 1983, I was born at the end of 1976) and here it really shows.
But, unfortunately, “Watching Neighbours twice a day” is a pointless, vacuous exercise in lame nostalgia that has nothing original to say about its chosen subject of 1990s British Television. Ostensibly a quickfire quiz, The Guessing Game is really a show that pushes facts aside in favour of flights of fancy and rewards the funniest, luckiest and most bizarre guesses.Read any history of the Nineties in Britain and you will read about Britpop, Blair, the birth of the Premier League and the rise of new lads. Widdicombe tours nationwide as one of the UK’s finest stand-up comedians as well as co-hosting The Last Leg, and has starred on Have I Got News For You, Live At The Apollo, Taksmaster and numerous other TV comedy Shows.
Filled with all the things they never tell you at antenatal classes, Parenting Hell is a beguiling mixture of humour, rumination and conversation for prospective parents, new parents, old parents and never-to-be parents alike. Anyway, Josh begins by discussing Gus Honeybun, a regional ITV children’s puppet famous to anyone growing up in the south-west of England at almost any point during the last four decades of the 20th century but wholly unfamiliar to me and the vast silent majority of the world who grew up anywhere else. And just when they thought it couldn't get any harder, why didn't anyone warn them about the slices of unmatched euphoric joy and pride that occasionally come piercing through, drenching you in unbridled happiness in much the same way a badly burped baby drenches you in milk-sick?Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you. I’ve never seen most of these TV shows, being American, but Josh describes them in perfect and hilarious detail!
I was super excited when the book landed on my doormat – and even got goosebumps from reading the chapter titles (which are all named after different 90s TV programmes) – as they brought back lots of memories. This started during the pandemic as ‘Lockdown Parenting Hell’ and has subsequently been rebranded ‘Parenting Hell’. It is obvious from the start that he has a strong interest in the nineties and relives it in extreme detail that any fan of nostalgia will love. I can only imagine how much people will love it now they can read our moaning in book form rather than having to hear it coming from our annoying accents. He also hosts one of the country's most popular podcasts - Lockdown Parenting Hell - with fellow comedian Rob Beckett and Quickly Kevin Will He Score, a podcast about football in the '90s.I’m a few years younger than Josh and I didn’t watch as much TV as he did (it sounds like no one watched as much TV as he did) but I remembered most of the shows and other content. It's also funny how his team Plymouth and mine Brighton started the decade in the Second Division only to tumble down to the Fourth tier in roughly the same seasons. I think it helps further if you were a child or teenager in the 90's but I think you'd enjoy it regardless. There are no chapters on Baywatch, Hollyoaks, The Darling Buds of May, Friends, Byker Grove, South Park or Sweet Valley High either. He also hosts one of the country’s most popular podcasts – Lockdown Parenting Hell– with fellow comedian Rob Beckett and Quickly Kevin Will He Score, a podcast about football in the 90s.
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