Friends forever: the inside story of the American sitcom classic

Here is a test to tell you whether you will like this book or not: when I write ‘So, no one told you life was going to be this way…’, do you secretly clap your hands four times? If so, could you be any more excited to get your hands on it?

The excellent news is that, just like the show, Still Friends, which rabid fans would almost certainly buy whatever old rubbish was in it, is much, much better than it needed to be. It will appeal to anyone interested, not just in the six stars (seven if you include Marcel the monkey, which I most certainly do) but in how the extraordinary 24-episode-a-year studio system managed to churn out such quality at such a pace (answer: with extreme difficulty).

This is the ultimate deep dive, told in a breezy journalistic style. Well-known facts — it’s estimated that at one point 20 per cent of all haircuts given in New York were ‘the Rachel’ — are joined by plenty of new information. For example, when Ross’s ex-wife Carol got married to her girlfriend Susan, the episode wasn’t shown in the southern states, and the father of Jane Sibbert (the actress playing Carol) actually encouraged his Bible study group to send her hate mail — back when hate mail involved thinking about it, writing a letter, addressing it and physically taking it to the post office.

Just as mind-bogglingly, Jennifer Aniston was originally contracted to another network and couldn’t take on the role of Rachel. In response, NBC scheduled an entire run of film premieres against the show she was then in, in the hopes that it would collapse in the ratings, get cancelled and release her, which it promptly did.