Top Takeaways from What did the 90s really do to us?

Arts critic and broadcaster Miranda Sawyer, who has written the song-by-song account of Britpop, led a panel that lived the decade from very different vantage points. Harriet Harman was in the Commons for the whole of it, Judge Jules was on the decks, Jason McGann was building games in Leeds and Denise van Outen was on breakfast television. The conversation moved between politics, music, technology and nostalgia, and asked whether the 1990s deserve the reputation they have acquired.

Top Takeaways from the panel on life in the 90s

“There were a few of us around that time. It felt like women were finally having a voice, and the Spice Girls burst on the scene. But it became expected that we’d do the lads magazines. At the time we thought it was empowering but I look back and in many ways it was horrifying. The ladette tag became quite hard to shake off.” – Denise van Outen

“The early 90s was a different world. Parliament was 97% men. People forget how stultifying it was. By the end of the decade we had a Labour government and more than a hundred women MPs” – Baroness Harriet Harman

“There were a load of good things about electronic dance music. Football hooliganism disappeared almost overnight. The dance floor was a great equaliser. There were people from all sorts of backgrounds enjoying it.” – Judge Jules MBE

“Today, the value of the games industry is like movies and music combined. In the early 90s, the NES was around but wasn’t big in the UK. Once the SEGA Megadrive arrived, it completely changed. Then the PlayStation. Sony specifically went for an older market. It was a great strategy.” – Jason McGann

“Festival culture changed things in the 90s. Politically there was change in the air too. There was a feeling of doors being pushed open.” – Miranda Sawyer

Further Reading

• Uncommon People: Britpop and Beyond in 20 Songs, Miranda Sawyer (Nine Eight Books, 2024). Link
• A Woman’s Work, Harriet Harman (Allen Lane, 2017). Link
• A Bit of Me: From Basildon to Broadway, and Back, Denise van Outen (Ebury, 2022). Link
• The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock, John Harris (Fourth Estate, 2003). Link
• A Classless Society: Britain in the 1990s, Alwyn W. Turner (Aurum, 2013). Link
• Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture, Simon Reynolds (Faber, 1998). Link

Further Listening and Watching

• Judge Jules Presents The Global Warm Up, weekly radio show and podcast. Link
• Electoral Dysfunction, Sky News podcast with Beth Rigby, Ruth Davidson and Harriet Harman. Link
• Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Brit Pop, documentary, 2003. Link
• Britpop: The Music That Changed Britain, Channel 5, 2023, My5. Link
• Everybody in the Place: An Incomplete History of Britain 1984 to 1992, Jeremy Deller, BBC Four, 2019. Link
• White Wine Question Time: Denise van Outen, podcast episode. Link

Further Help

• The 90s: Art and Fashion, Tate Britain, curated by Edward Enninful, 8 October 2026 to 14 February 2027. Link
• Museum of Youth Culture, archive of British youth culture including rave and Britpop. Link
• National Videogame Museum, Sheffield, the UK’s centre for videogames. Link