Which were better ... the 1990s or 1980s?

How many of us have been bored to tears by Great Uncle Nobby’s tales of wartime Britain in the 1940s and how we have never had it so good?

Or the soporific stories of our parents about the groovy 1960s?

While all prefer our own nostalgia, there are some decades which provoke a degree among any of us.

Despite the boring clichés, who wouldn’t wanted to have grown up in the age of the Stones and Beatles as well as free love?

And it seems there was a market for 1980s nostalgia before that decade had even finished even though it did not have that many redeeming features.

Yet, for many, memories of stone-washed denim and Wham! outweigh all the negatives such as Margaret Thatcher and Aids.

It has long been a mystery to me why the 1980s gets a much better press than its successor, the 1990s, which spawned much better music and, from my point of view, far fonder memories.

The point of the 1990s is, even though the early part was heavily steeped in a seedy party drugs culture, it was a pleasant decade to live through. The pace of change was rapid: at the very start of it only people who wore braces to work had a ‘mobile’ or car phone while by the very end you were in the danger of being the odd one out. Exactly how far in the past that time is has been skilfully highlighted in the excellent This Is England 90.

The sublime acting and gripping drama aside, the real genius of this programme lies in how expertly it captures a bygone era.

From a reminder of how taking a private call in one part of the house was reliant on the person who took the initial call not eavesdropping to the nightmare of finding an obscure location without a SatNav, this is a show which strikes a chord with millions.

While I can remember nearly most of the 1990s, which largely involved waking up on strange sofas, it doesn’t mean I had any less of a ball than my parents said they did in the 1960s.