Here are the biggest news, sport and entertainment stories of 1993…
Britain’s longest recession since the 1930s was officially over as the economy grew during the first three months of the year. The Conservatives claimed credit for the upturn in fortunes but critics claimed it was luck more than anything else. However it was achieved, it was welcomed by the nation’s people who could now look forward to spending again.
One new place they could spend at being Buckingham Palace; the public being allowed inside for the first time ever during the summer of ’93. With the entrance fee being set at £8, it wasn’t cheap, but that did nothing to hold back demand; within a week of going on sale, all advance group booking slots to visit Buckingham Palace had been filled for the next three years.
Other news included an oil tanker carrying running aground near the Shetland Islands (resulting in 84,700 tonnes of crude oil being spilled into the North Sea and a major ecological catastrophe); and anti-racist demonstrations being held across London in response to criminal charges being dropped against two youths accused of murdering black teenager Stephen Lawrence.
In the world of sport, horse racing’s big event ‘The Grand National’ (with a worldwide audience of 300 million people) ended in ‘chaos’ after many of the riders had failed to realise a false start had been called and had set off around the racetrack. The Jockey Club was forced to declare the race void; meaning bookmakers had to re-pay the £75 million in bets that had been placed on the race (and miss out on their biggest pay-day of the year!).
On a personal mission to resolve alien related ‘chaos’, were FBI agents ‘Mulder & Scully’; their popular US series ‘X-Files’ coming across the Atlantic to UK screens. Motivated by the belief that Mulder’s sister had been abducted by little green men, they set about trying to find the ‘truth’. One place where the truth definitely wasn’t was on ‘Beavis & Butthead’s sofa. These boys spent ’93 becoming world famous for flicking between TV channels and playing football with frogs.
With Britain itself still struggling to come up with any blockbuster movies of it’s own, ‘Jurassic Park’ and ‘Indecent Proposal’ were the major films to hit cinemas during the year. ‘Jurassic Park’ involved dinosaurs (really quite scary-looking, genuine ones!) running riot around a theme park created by an eccentric millionaire. ‘Indecent Proposal’ was another tale to involve a rich man (this time a billionaire played by Robert Redford); this guy offering a couple, who had just lost a fortune in Las Vegas, $1m to spend the night with the wife.