Friday 26 May 1995 (continued).

Page 37. On we go then. The TV listings start with Friday which include a tribute to the great Kenny Everett on BBC1. There’s also a strange description for Stars In Their Eyes on ITV on Saturday. 

Page 43. A full-page advert for the Millionaires card game. To play along you have to watch Carlton on Tuesday at 7:30. There’s always a catch, isn’t there.

Page 44. A page of satellite and cable TV listings, including long-gone channels such as The Family Channel and Wire TV.

Page 45. A page of radio listings, including all the national and local London stations such as BBC GLR, Jazz FM, and Melody FM.

Page 46. Horoscopes with Patric Walker, and also some celebrity birthdays. Helena Bonham-Carter is 29 today.

Page 50. A business article entitled “Don’t be afraid as machines take control” which informs us “Barclays has a special unit looking at the ways the group can benefit from using new electronics. It already pumps product information on to the Internet and is set to launch an Internet shopping service next week”.

Page 52. The comic strips page. This is another thing you don’t get in the Standard any more. There are five strips, Modesty Blaise, The Wizard Of Id, Augusta, Bristow, and Garfield. Bristow was a particularly long-running strip (indeed, this is episode 9,452). Also on the page is a recipe, Bridge, Chess, and crosswords. 

Page 53. The letters page. You couldn’t email in those days though so make sure your fax machine is ready. And there’s another crossword!

Page 54. The start of some pages of theatre reviews and lots of adverts for gigs and new films coming out. Who remembers the likes of Richie Rich, Bullets Over Broadway, A Feast At Midnight, and Circle Of Friends now?

Page 62. The start of lots of pages of property adverts, also including the results of The Evening Standard New Homes Awards 1995. 

Page 73. The start of the Sport section. Because the football season has just about ended, there is little coverage. There is a lot about other sports though, including the ongoing Rugby World Cup, newcomer Greg Rusedski hoping to do well at Wimbledon, and cricket results.

Page 76. Features an advert for the short-lived cable channel Channel One. There always seemed to be a lot of adverts for that channel in the Standard, I can’t find anything online so I’m not sure if there was a connection, it was probably the London Live of its day. 

Page 80. The back page which features the headline “Atherton Inspires England” in the cricket, how Nick Faldo is doing in the golf, and another crossword. And that brings issue 51,844 of the Evening Standard to an end.

This piece is intended to be a one-off but I do have a few more vintage editions of the Evening Standard around but none as old as this one so I might look at another one soon if people found this interesting. Also, this is my 99th post on here so in my 100th tomorrow I’ll take the chance to look back at the classic TV shows that I’ve reviewed already and reveal the ones that are still to come, plus a few other things that I have lined up for the future.

Friday 26 May 1995.

Something a little different now. Sometimes when you look in old cupboards you find unlikely things. A while back I found an old edition of the London Evening Standard from May 1995. No idea why we still had it, there are a few pages missing so maybe someone wanted an article and mislaid it so it ended up still being around for years afterwards. So I have decided to have a look through some of the pages and point out a few things that you might find interesting and give something of an idea of where the Evening Standard and the world in general was almost 20 years ago, long before social media.

Page 1. The main headline on the front page is “NATO WAR JETS STRIKE BACK”. The Evening Standard (“incorporating The Evening News“) cost 30p in those days, of course it is now free. The weather? “Rain”. As it’s a Friday there’s a plug for the magazine (“Why London will be top of the world”) but unfortunately I haven’t still got that. There’s also a gamecard that could make you a millionaire! 

Page 4. It’s surprising now to look back and realise how few pages are in colour. Celine Dion is very pleased that her single “Think Twice” has gone triple platinum and there’s a Tower Records advert for Alison Moyet’s new album.

Page 8. Features a political cartoon by “Adams” (“JAK is on holiday”). Could anyone ever decipher what was supposed to be going on in these? This isn’t something that you don’t get in the Standard any more. 

Page 13. There’s a full-page article on Peter Cook who had died earlier in the year, with a picture captioned “shortly before his death”. Better than a picture of him taken just after his death I suppose.

Page 22. A piece on “The OJ Trial” which has now entered its 17th week.

Page 29. The “Weekend” section starts, featuring the latest TV and film news. Because the Standard isn’t published on weekends or Bank Holidays, we get four days worth of TV and radio listings, hoorah!

Page 31. The “Mr Pepys” column. Seemingly one of those gossip columns. Among other things, Mr Pepys predicts big things for an up-and-coming 23-year-old TV presenter. I wonder whatever happened to her? 

Page 35. The Victor Lewis-Smith column. He was a TV critic in the Standard for many years and known for being very bitter, hardly liking any of the shows that he reviewed and making lots of bad taste jokes. But today… gosh… he really likes the show that he has reviewed! It’s the sitcom Men Behaving Badly, described as “a perfect mix of speed and timing” and “brim full of quotable lines”. He concludes by referring to the production company that made the show Hartswood Films, which was part of Thames. “You remember Thames, from the days when London had a TV station it could be proud of?”. On the same page there’s an edition of Gary Larson’s crazy one-panel cartoon strip The Far Side. 

I’ll bring you the second half of this review including looking at the TV listings, business news and sport pages later.