Nick Ahad: Friends was, is and always will be magnificent. And I'll happily fight any millennial who says otherwise

I've spent a fortnight now trying compose a perfect tweet (I'm increasingly of the belief that the main reason I'm not Hemingway yet is because he did not have to battle the myriad distractions of social media by which I am constant assailed).
By The Newsroom
Published 18th Jan 2018, 18:19 BST
Updated 18th Jan 2018, 18:20 BST
Friends, starring Courtney Cox, Matthew Perry, Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, Matt Le Blanc and Lisa Kudrow, has recently arrived on Netflix.Friends, starring Courtney Cox, Matthew Perry, Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, Matt Le Blanc and Lisa Kudrow, has recently arrived on Netflix.
Friends, starring Courtney Cox, Matthew Perry, Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, Matt Le Blanc and Lisa Kudrow, has recently arrived on Netflix.

I want to tweet something, and I am well aware of how pathetic the amount of thought I am giving this is by the way, that sums up my ire towards Millennials and their opinions on a little TV show called Friends. I want to write something that pithily announces my issue with Millennials in 140 characters (not 280 – I’m old school Twitter, any more than 140 feels like cheating. Shakespeare didn’t say “brevity, if you think about it, when all is said and done, is truly the soul of wit”).

I haven’t yet managed to find a way of saying: “How dare you complain about this show? Have you no idea how culturally significant it was? How much it has shaped the world in which you live? You think the ease of access to your increasingly ridiculous caffeinated drinks would have been anything like it is without Central Perk? And how dare you call it racist, homophobic, transphobic and fat-shaming – it was and shall always remain the show that makes you feel more part of a gang, a clique, a group, a thing to which you can belong than anything that has come before or will ever follow it.”

Try as I might, I can’t get that into a tweet.

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Friends has come to Netflix. The streaming service made available all 10 series earlier this month and my productivity rate went through the floor.

Since discovering the show, unfathomable though it is that there are people walking the face of the earth with a hinterland in which the millions of cultural references birthed by Friends mean nothing, Millennials have had their feelings hurt by the lack of black and brown faces in the show, by the jokes about Chandler’s effeminate nature possibly meaning he’s gay and by the fun had with Monica’s formerly fat shape. Well, as a brown-faced person whose weight fluctuates like I’m Oprah in the 90s, I LOVE Friends and have zero problems with any of the above. Friends wasn’t tackling societal problems. It wasn’t a BBC Four documentary. It was the most colourful, warmest, friendliest hug of a TV show that has ever been invented.

Millennials with their too quick to offend sensibilities might come for my boxset (that’s how we used to watch it by the way) but if they want my dvds, they’ll have to prise them from my cold dead hands because they might be sensitive and all, but they don’t know that we know how it feels when your job’s a joke, you’re broke and your love life’s DOA.