The occasion was a 16th birthday party.
The night was a Friday and the year was 1995. There was no question about it, at 9pm everything would stop so we could all turn on Channel 4 to watch the latest episode of Friends.
It seems so alien now, when almost everything can be binged in a one sitting, but for many teenagers in the 90s Friends was the satellite around which everything else orbited.
It was funny, it talked about sex, there were good looking guys and impossibly skinny girls but most importantly our Friends, like the theme song suggested, were with us, for a decade.
I started watching the show at 15, before I sat any exams.
As the last episode aired I was married with a baby. We grew up together. I don’t think I’ve gone a day without watching Friends ever since.
Matthew Perry was brutally honest in his memoir
Even when the show stopped appearing weekly, reruns on Sunday mornings and weeknights lasted for years. From there it found a place on comedy channels and all 10 seasons are currently on Netflix.
So hearing that Matthew Perry – aka Chandler Bing – passed away this weekend at just 54, was like finding out a best friend from school had died too soon.
Perry, who also appeared in the Good Wife as Mike Kresteva, made no secret of battling his demons.
When the much-hyped reunion show aired fans like me felt desperately sad that while we can quote a line from Friends for every occasion, he confessed to not being able to remember entire seasons due to his alcohol and drug addiction.
However, when his brutally honest book Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing hit the shelves, lasting sobriety – and a happy future – seemed possible for the star.
His wish, he said, was that his struggles wouldn’t be for nothing if he could just help someone else.
Yet, at just 10 years older than I am, he was found drowned at home in his hot tub. Tragically his last few Instagram posts perhaps hinted that things weren’t okay.
Could we be any more heartbroken?
Matthew Perry provided unforgettable scenes
Of all six characters played by an ensemble cast including Jennifer Aniston (Rachel), Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe), Courtney Cox (Monica), David Schwimmer (Ross) and Matt Le Blanc (Joey), Perry’s Chandler was the character I loved most.
“Can I interest you in a sarcastic comment?” just about frames his role.
He was superb at physical comedy and his quips are probably some of the most quoted.
“Say Ross, when you picture Phoebe on the streets is she surrounded by the entire cast of Annie?” is one of our favourites.
I even bought a former boyfriend a sweater vest (aka a tank top) – in a bid to manufacture my very own Chan Chan man.
You really can’t understate the influence of this show. There are probably women my age still trying to grow out the layers from ‘that’ Rachel do.
This one time, after getting dumped and nursing a broken heart, I watched the episode with Ross in his leather pants.
The night before I moved to England for college I tuned in. It was the one where Phoebe ends up in the little jail.
When I went through a miscarriage at the same time as losing my Papa, I watched and re-watched the one where Emma won’t stop crying.
I defy you to find a funnier episode.
That 16th birthday party I mentioned? I still remember us piling into a living room watching the one where Chandler falls over the door Joey cut in half.
When I had my babies, it was just them, me and an episode of Friends for company during night feeds.
‘A show of its time’
Even now, Friends is still a fixture in our house.
My husband and I watched the show together when we dated, we got a box set of VHS tapes for an anniversary and in some of the lowest times, through personal tragedy and the depths of grief, the one accompaniment was this show.
On a recent trip to New York we, of course, visited the Friends building saying “How you doin?’’ and laughed like Janice for the pictures.
Not everyone is a fan, of course. It was most certainly a show of its time.
It never truly represented the diversity of the city where it was based, and jokes about Monica’s weight or those centred on Joey’s objectification of women would likely be edited out nowadays.
But I’ve yet to find a show more perfectly cast, or one with lines as memorable.
And so I’m so I’m beyond sad that Matthew Perry is no longer with us.
‘Bitterly cruel’
My hope is that he found peace and his end was not because of turmoil. It seems so bitterly cruel that someone who brought so much joy to others could have so much anguish himself.
In his own words he wanted to be remembered for the redemptive good he did, channelling his own experiences into helping others.
“The best thing about me, bar none, is that if somebody comes to me and says, ‘I can’t stop drinking, can you help me?’ I can say ‘yes’ and follow up and do it,” he said.
“When I die, I don’t want Friends to be the first thing that’s mentioned. I want that [his service to others] to be the first thing that’s mentioned.”
But what’s deeply sad about this is that he he clearly didn’t perceive the good he did through Friends.
So on behalf of all of us who anchored ourselves to this show when everything else was in flux; and who wear it like an old house coat when times are tough, thank you Matthew.
It wouldn’t have been the same without you.
Conversation