1994: Mad fer it!
Issue No 1 Previously a broadsheet section in the newspaper, The Guide was expanded into a magazine proper on 27 August 1994 [see footnote]. Nobody bothered to archive a copy, though, so the best we can do is show you a Xeroxed reproduction of the cover. At the time we were concerned with the weird state of science shows on TV and had a wander around the Notting Hill Carnival.
SPOTTED! All Saints From a review of their single Silver Shadow: "Born in the same year and in the same area of London, what else could these girls do but form a swingbeat group? Their debut is a sickly Atlantic Starr cover with an idiotic number of mixes, encompassing every dance style bar Morris. Eternal may rest easy in their Timberlands." Note: swingbeat was a form of R&B considered innovative in the last century. Eternal were a band not considered innovative by anybody.
Controversial! "Already a Disney classic and much more deserving of your awe than nonsense like The Lion King."
In the fight for Disney immortality, Paul Mathur backs Aladdin
Zippy the pinhead American countercultural comic strip Zippy The Pinhead runs in The Guide until 1997. Featuring non-linear avant garde storytelling, Zippy puzzles many a reader, so much so that the strip's creator, Bill Griffith, ends up creating a guide to reading Zippy on his website. We've just had a quick look and are still stumped, to be honest.
SPOTTED! Jeff Buckley A preview of a show at London's Garage on 1 Sep: "The son of 70s folk-singing hero Tim, Jeff Buckley shares his father's gift for enigmatic lyrics and piercingly emotional singing. His debut album Grace, is startlingly accomplished for someone so youngish (he sings, writes and plays harmonium, organ and octave-leaping guitar). Book your tickets now." Caroline Sullivan
1995 Ah, go on, go on go on!
SPOTTED! Father Ted Ben Marshall describes the now-beloved Linehan and Matthews sitcom as "a sort of Priests Behaving Badly set in rural Ireland... This show is very funny, with a super cast and a script that sweetly balances sitcom plot No 4 (main character's vanity project has hilarious consequences) with touches of Beckettian absurdity."
Rich Hall's list of things that are more engaging than Andie MacDowell:
1. Watching a guitar neck slowly warp. 2. A radish 3. Malcolm McDowell. 4. A tropical fish. 5. A dead tropical fish floating to the top of an aquarium. 6. Andie MacDowell floating to the top of an aquarium.
We liked… Elastica, whose debut album tops the charts. "What a pleasure to have such a vibrant, uncomplicated record at number one."
We didn't like… Trip-hoppers Portishead. Ross Jones describes their single Sour Times as "Torture by wailing woman, breakbeat and winklepicker – no matter how many cappuccinos you wash it down with".
SPOTTED! Al Murray
His party piece is impersonating firearms." Not a great deal has changed, then.
1996: Twisted firestarter
Friends takes over "Joey, Phoebe, Rachel, Ross, Monica and Chandler are friends. They don't have any others and are clearly never going to. It's no wonder they cling to each other so tightly. There they are in every scene - joined at the hip, crammed into the shot like a family photo, looking like some sort of grinning six-headed monster... Most of the jokes are so obvious, you can see them coming from so far away, you wonder if they were written by sky writers." Jim Shelley, Tapehead
Six shows we said could be 'the next friends' (they weren't)
TOO SOMETHING (Slacker Friends) A couple of bitterly aspirational losers toil away in a corporate mailroom. (1 season, 22 episodes)
CAN'T HURRY LOVE (Downmarket Friends) A Manhattan counsellor with witty buddies looks for love. (1 season, 19 episodes)
IT'S NOT FOR YOU (Adulterous Friends) Elizabeth McGovern as an engaged woman who falls for an engaged man. (1 season, 7 episodes)
THE SINGLE GUY (Married Friends) A group of hitched pals try to point the lone bachelor towards the altar. (2 seasons, 43 episodes)
PARTNERS (Architect Friends) One chum decides to get married. (1 season, 22 episodes)
ALMOST PERFECT (Media Friends) The hard-nosed producer of a TV cop show and her eccentric group of writers. (2 seasons, 34 episodes)
Controversial! "It defines how unspeakably bad British films can be... smug, self-satisfied and deeply convinced of its own coolness, yet in fact completely clueless..." Jacques Peretti on Trainspotting
SPOTTED! Spice girls
"Jailbait pop in the not entirely successful tradition of Faith, Hope And Charity (notable alumna: Dani Behr) and Milan (notable alumna: Martine McCutcheon)...Five chirruping bubbleheads who, completely independently of any suggestions their management might have made, bang on about "girl power comin' at you" and how you should be "down" with them, as if they actually believe teenage girls to be as gullible as most record company execs." Turns out they were, Ross Jones
Best thing since sliced bread Smitten with a stand-up called Hovis Presley, we devote plenty of column inches to this gloomy Tim Vine-esque comic. Sample gag: "Since I got this new neck brace, I've never looked back."
1997: MmmBop!
Lock down your aerial! Jacques Peretti embraces speed garage: "The biggest dancefloor revolution since Cyril Smith took his old mum for a spin round the Rochdale Liberal Club in 1973."
Shatner's bassoon Jim Shelley watches Brass Eye and correctly predicts that sketches about the killer drug cake and gays in the Navy – "They can't swim, they attract enemy radar" – will become legendary. "Anything that pisses Noel Edmunds off this much constitutes a public service," he writes.
Simon says… Predating our fixation with The Wire was our adoration of David Simon's original slice of Baltimore, Homicide: Life On The Streets. In an interview with Andrew Pulver in March, he articulates his vision for the show in typically forthright fashion. "There had to be a better way to communicate that these were human beings and something godawful was happening in American society."
Not worth a mention? Channel 5. With a full complement of Spice Girls in attendance, the launch of a new terrestrial channel was a hefty event in media land. The Guide meanwhile, chose an Arthur C Clarke travelogue and a documentary on Jesus as its Picks Of The Day.
Questions to which the answer is no "Are Hurricane #1 No 1 the future of pop?" asks Caroline Sullvan
Computer says yes "Don't be surprised if your grandchildren are still poring over the meaning of Paranoid Android in 2017": Sullivan redeems herself by raving about Radiohead moving into the big time with OK Computer.
1998: Oh my God, they killed Kenny!
Pull the auteur one The director of the moment was gonzo auteur Harmony Korine, receiving plenty of column inches for his supposedly shocking debut Gummo. Danny Leigh doesn't quite go with the crowd: "Either the arrival of the next genuinely great American auteur or an incoherent load of old guff with a death metal soundtrack." Probably the latter, looking back.
This art will go on Titanic was crashing through box office records like so much floating glacial matter, and David Quantick kind of likes it: "At over three hours, this film is longer than most voyages, but manages to be a genuine action romance. Lush, lavish and thrilling, it nonetheless suffers from the fact that most of the time you want to punch smug Leonardo Di Caprio. It's generally a success. Expect a Paul Verhoeven remake of the Poseidon Adventure very soon."
Tidings of good will "Finally, a dental counterpart to Julia Roberts." Joe Queenan hails the coming of Matt Damon.
SPOTTED! Peter Kay William Cook introduces the future Phoenix Nights and garlic bread funnyman ahead of his show at Bromley's unpromising-sounding Splatt! Club: "His hardest gig so far was a year ago, in front of a few hundred truckers and their spouses at a Labour Club Christmas bash. 'I had a broken arm but they thought it was a prop.' Nevertheless, this prolific, spontaneous entertainer remained on stage for three-quarters of an hour."
1999: Whassup?
The Sopranos 10pm, C4 A Mafia boss in psychotherapy? Over his mother? Discard all preconceptions now – this is HBO's much-lauded gangster drama and it depicts a world in which the old certainties are no more, where wiseguys in new-fangled espresso bars bemoan the rape of their culture, and where the younger generation have no loyalty and can't ever get Godfather quotes right. "Hey, Marty," one mobster shouts on catching a glimpse of Mr Scorsese at a club, "I loved Kundun." Rick Jordan
Antichrist superstar As Marilyn Manson gets it in the neck in the wake of Columbine, John Patterson sympathises with the nu-metaller. "The politicians by and large avoided minor issues like the obscene availability of handguns in American societyand went straight for the really obvious candidates. Marilyn Manson, it almost immediately transpired, had not featured in any way on the killers' Top 10 playlists. The point, however, is that condemning Marilyn Manson is the fastest, surest way – short of going postal at your high school – to get your face on national television.
Passion killer 10 April 1999 was apparently the day you had to conceive if you wanted the first baby of the new millennium: ITV duly programmes a night of "TV foreplay" entitled Birth Race 2000, featuring Lisa Riley and Davina McCall.
• This footnote was added on 11 January 2013: The first edition of the Guide in its A5 magazine format was actually published on 4 September 1993.
