Growing Up in '90s Britain Trivia Quiz

Answer: Kuwait

Saddam Hussein was the Ba'athist President of Iraq from 1979 to 2003. Under his regime, Iraq invaded Kuwait, claiming Kuwait was overstepping OPEC oil quotas and drilling into Iraqi territory. The invasion began in August 1990 with the bombing of Kuwait City, and the United Nations responded with Resolution 660, demanding that Iraq withdraw. The Arab League also passed its own resolution, wanting to solve the conflict within the League; only Iraq, Libya and Palestine opposed Iraq's withdrawal. UN Resolution 661 placed Iraq under economic sanctions. A coalition of the US (under President George HW Bush), the UK (under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher), France, Egypt and Saudi Arabia fought alongside Kuwait.

Although the war ended in 1991, Iraq remained unstable for many years afterwards, while thousands of Palestinians were forced to flee from Kuwait. Over 1000 Kuwaiti civilians were killed and over 600 were missing, and several Kuwaiti oil fields were set on fire by Iraq. The number of Iraqi deaths was estimated between 175,000 and 300,000.

Answer: 16

Power ballad, karaoke favourite, and guilty pleasure '(Everything I Do) I Do It for You' was a smash hit and topped the UK charts for an incredible 16 weeks, two weeks less than Frankie Laine's 'I Believe'. ('Sweet' is a reference to 'sweet 16'.) The song was written by Adams, Michael Kamen, and producer Mutt Lange, and appeared on Adams' sixth album, 'Waking Up the Neighbours'. Outside the UK, it went Number One all over the world, from Australia and the US (the 'Billboard' Hot 100) to France and Greece.

The video featured scenes from 'Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves', which also featured Alan Rickman as the Sheriff of Nottingham, Christian Slater as Will Scarlet, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as Maid Marian, and Morgan Freeman as Azeem.

Answer: Bovine spongiform encephalopathy

Admittedly, my family were not big meat eaters, but I was terrified of catching variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, the human equivalent of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, as contaminated beef was found to cause vCJD in humans. The first human casualty, Stephen Churchill, died in 1995. However, earlier in the decade, the main victims of the BSE epidemic were cattle; the outbreak of BSE was thought to have been caused by feeding cattle meat-and-bone meal, a byproduct of the rendering industry that contains the remains of other animals, including cattle with the disease.

The impact on the British beef and dairy industry was devastating. Although John Gummer, a Conservative MP and Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, claimed that British beef was safe and fed his daughter a beefburger live on TV, cases of BSE were reported in cats and even a tiger, proving that the disease could be transferred to other species. The export of British beef was subsequently banned in the EU in 1996. At the peak of the BSE epidemic, 4.4 million cattle were slaughtered to stop the spread of the disease. By 1994, the disease had also spread to humans.

Answer: Stephen Lawrence

Stephen Lawrence was 18 years old when he was stabbed to death in London by a group of white men on 22nd April 1993. Although Lawrence managed to run from the scene, along with his friend Duwayne Brooks, he died of his injuries. Although the suspects were arrested but not charged, Lawrence's family initiated a private enquiry, and subsequently campaigned for years for the case to be reopened, arguing that the Metropolitan Police were institutionally racist. An inquest was opened into Lawrence's death in 1997. The 'Daily Mail' labelled the five suspects as 'murderers' on its front page and supported the Lawrence family's campaign for justice. In 2006, new evidence was uncovered that implicated the suspects in Lawrence's murder. Gary Dobson, who had been involved in another racist attack on a black teenager, and David Norris were found guilty of Lawrence's murder and sentenced in 2012.

Lawrence was eulogised many years later by punk band Bob Vylan in 'We Live Here', a song about anti-black racism in Britain: 'Remember Stephen Lawrence/He too was free to roam/Eighteen years old at the bus stop/Murdered on his way home'.

On a personal note, 1993 was also the year when I lost my dad, an energy journalist, to cancer.

Answer: Manchester United

'Man United are short-sighted' was a playground chant sung by schoolchildren in the early '90s, and how we wished it was true. Alex Ferguson took over the Red Devils in 1986 and won his first FA Cup with them in 1990, and his first Premier League title in 1993, before 'doing the Double' in 1994. United were also notable for their cadre of young players, including Welsh wonder Ryan Giggs, David Beckham (who would go on to become one of their most notable players for footballing and non-footballing reasons), Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt, and Gary and Phil Neville. Pundit Alan Hansen, who had claimed that 'you don't win anything with kids', was later forced to eat his words when United did just that.

In the 1994-1995 season, both Everton and Blackburn Rovers shocked the football world: Everton by beating United in the FA Cup Final with a Paul Rideout header, and Blackburn by winning the title under former Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish. However, United was back on top the following season. (My Evertonian uncle was at the final and dropped by our house with some souvenirs for my brother, who was also an Everton fan and had been to some of the run-up cup games with him.)

Answer: Pogs

The game of milk caps is thought to have originated in Hawaii in the early 20th century. In the early 1990s, they experienced a revival, starting in Hawaii, and were rebranded as Pogs by the World Pog Federation. Pogs were cardboard discs that were piled up in stacks, face down, and players took it in turns to hit them with a (usually plastic) disc called a slammer. If the Pogs flipped over landed face up, the player with the slammer kept them; if they landed face down, the players restacked them for the next player, and the game would continue until all the Pogs had flipped. The player with the most Pogs won. I was rubbish at Pogs and lost all mine.

As well as the official Pogs, variants such as football Pogs (which my brother collected) and superhero Pogs existed. My brother and I also had a Pog machine and made our own from a Lakeland Plastics catalogue and 'Match' magazine. Our primary school banned them, partly because they encouraged gambling, and partly because of the risk of children being hit in the face by slammers. The Pog fad died out by 1997, with Tamagotchis - virtual pets in a small egg-shaped console - becoming the new UK school craze.

Answer: The Spice Girls

Before the Spice Girls, girl groups almost never featured on the cover of pop magazines, London-based R'n'B group Eternal being an exception; boy bands such as Take That, East 17 (who I preferred) and Worlds Apart were all the rage. However, the Spice Girls took the world by storm with the release of 'Wannabe' in July 1996. Formed by Bob and Chris Herbert originally, via an ad in 'The Stage', the quintet of Emma Bunton, Victoria Adams (later Beckham), Melanie Chisholm, Melanie Brown and Geri Halliwell (later Horner) had three UK Number Ones, including the much-coveted Christmas Number One with '2 Become 1'. Their debut album 'Spice' was also a global Number One hit. 'Top of the Pops Magazine' gave them the nicknames of 'Baby Spice' (Emma), 'Posh Spice' (Victoria), 'Sporty Spice' (Melanie C), 'Ginger Spice' (Geri) and 'Scary Spice' (Melanie B), all of which stuck. Some American fans called Geri 'Sexy Spice' instead.

The Spice Girls were ubiquitous in 1997, releasing 'Mama/Who Do You Think You Are?' as the Comic Relief single, meeting Nelson Mandela and Prince Charles and featuring in adverts for everything from lollipops to Pepsi, and even had their own film, 'Spiceworld'. In November 1997, they sacked their manager, Simon Fuller. They had three Christmas Number Ones in a row, with 'Too Much' in 1997 and 'Goodbye' in 1998; however, in May 1998, Geri left for personal reasons and embarked on a solo career. Melanie C later said that the Spice Girls effectively ended when Geri left and while they carried on as a quartet, they gradually drifted apart after making various solo albums and their third album 'Forever', aimed at gaining a US audience, failed to gain new fans while alienating the group's original fan base. They split in 2001.

Answer: Tony Blair

Margaret Thatcher, the first female Prime Minister of the UK, came to power in 1979. She was replaced by fellow Conservative John Major in 1990. Tony Blair, Labour MP for Sedgefield, was elected leader of the Labour Party on 21st July 1994 after the death of previous leader John Smith two months earlier (with Margaret Beckett standing in as acting leader in the interim). Under Smith, he had been the Shadow Home Secretary. Labour won the 1997 General Election in a landslide victory, the Conservatives' heaviest defeat since 1906, and Blair became the UK's youngest Prime Minister at the time at the age of 43.

He went on to serve three terms, before resigning in 2007.

Answer: Birmingham

Although Katrina and the Waves of 'Walking on Sunshine' fame were American, they were chosen to represent the UK in the 1997 Eurovision Song Contest. Our previous entrant had been Aussie singer Gina G with 'Ooh Ah...Just a Little Bit', which came eighth in the 1996 edition. 'Love Shine a Light' won the contest and reached Number One on the UK Singles Chart, and the 1998 edition was hosted in Birmingham at the National Indoor Arena and presented by Terry Wogan, famous for his sarcastic Eurovision commentary, and Ulrika Jonsson. The UK's entry was Imaani with 'Where Are You?', which came second; the winner was Israel's Dana International with 'Diva'. Dana International was notably the first transgender winner of the Eurovision Song Contest, and was a controversial figure in her home country.

(I didn't watch Eurovision 1998, though I did tune in to the contest the following year, hosted in Jerusalem and won by Sweden's Charlotte Johansson and her ABBA-esque 'Take Me To Your Heaven'. The Bullring is a large - and ugly - shopping centre and balti is a type of curry; the Anglo-Indian version has its origins in Birmingham, a city with a large Asian population. The Balti Triangle is an area of Birmingham famous for its curry houses.)

Answer: The Millennium Dome

From Robbie Williams' single 'Millennium' to the construction of the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, the millennium was the buzzword of the late '90s. The Millennium Dome was designed by Richard Rogers and built in Greenwich, London, and is a huge white marquee with twelve pillars, each representing a month of the year and a number on the clock face (a shout-out to Greenwich Mean Time). It was opened on New Year's Eve 1999 and Queen Elizabeth II attended the ceremony. The Dome originally housed an exhibition that lasted until New Year's Eve 2000, and featured a show by Peter Gabriel in the performance area in the middle of the Dome. The exhibition was divided into different sections entitled 'Who We Are', 'What We Do' and 'Where We Live'. It received a large amount of criticism for being expensive to maintain and failing to attract sufficient visitors.

After the Dome was closed, it temporarily opened in 2003 for the 'Winter Wonderland 2003' experience. In 2007, it became part of The O2, a large entertainment complex.

(Sadly, I did not celebrate the coming of the new millennium, as my family and I were all struck down with flu on New Year's Eve. We settled for watching 'Later with Jools Holland' on TV.)