IT was when I woke up shivering, with a raging hangover, on a flea-bitten carpet in a grotty Brixton flat that I realised two things. One: I’m getting too old to kip on living-room floors. Two: I hate reunions.

“It’ll be a laugh,” I told myself, heading to London for a weekend catch-up with some people I’d been to journalism college after a year or so. It didn’t take long to realise that, while we’d enjoyed a heady time together as students; sharing a house and bonding over the demands of an intensive post-grad course, we now had little in common.

One couple who had quickly fallen in love and spent the entire course wrapped around each other were no longer speaking, and the seething hatred between them was like barbed wire. A girl I’d pretended to like but secretly resented because she was always the high-flier among us bragged endlessly about landing a magazine job, while I was slumming it on a weekly newspaper. And the others...they just weren’t fun anymore. Student life is such a bubble; once you move on and reality bites, you often drift from even the closest of friends.

A reunion is like Glastonbury. Sounds like fun, but is it really? The prospect of meeting up with middle-aged people who were once friends is stressful and, inevitably, it becomes a competition: What if their lives have turned out better than mine? They’re bound to be on a higher pay bracket. They’ll have a better car, a bigger house. How much weight have we all piled on? What if no-one gets drunk anymore? Surely no-one can endure a reunion without getting plastered. What if someone announces they’re dying? What if all the “OMG do you remember the time when...?” stuff just turns out to be a depressing reminder of our youth, forever lost?

Reunions are as awkward in reality as they are on TV. They rarely work as a dramatic device, because we like to remember much-loved characters as they were. I loved This Life, the popular BBC drama about a group of young lawyers, but in the dull reunion episode, a decade on, they all turned out to be deeply unlikeable. Sex and the City was another of my Nineties TV staples but, let’s face it, the reunion movies weren’t great, and at least two of the cast were pretty much sworn enemies by then. The Cold Feet comeback quickly ran out of steam.

So what of Chandler, Monica and co? After years of rumours and denials, The One Where They All Get Back Together is finally on the cards, with confirmation that the cast of Friends will reunite this spring for a one-off special on streaming platform HBO Max.

The hit US sitcom ended after 10 series in 2004, with a perfect finale, and the repeats have rarely been off the small screen since. Currently shown on a comedy channel loop, Friends has worn well, give or take a few dated one-liners, and is beloved by a new generation. There is much excitement about catching up with the Central Perk gang - but do we really want to see them in middle-age, divorced and disillusioned? Is there a place for Joey’s mid-life crisis in these #MeToo times? Is the Ross-and-Rachel sexual tension still limping on into Menopause?

It is said that the reunion will be ‘unscripted’, so this could end up being six actors sitting around the table in Monica’s kitchen, reminiscing. Which might be preferable to shoe-horning their characters into a contrived episode that is never going to match their heyday.

As Jennifer Aniston once said, a reunion would never be as good as Friends was, so what’s the point?

Stick to the re-runs, guys, and let us remember you as you were.

* WHY do so many schools close at the first sign of snow? On Monday more than 100 schools in the district closed, despite the early morning snowfall turning to slush by about 10am.

Some pupils and staff may struggle to travel when roads are affected by snow, but surely not everyone lives that far from school. Could they not walk in?

I have friends who work in schools and they rub their hands with glee when it snows, because it means a day off. "Woop woop, snow day!" texted one, as I set off to work in a Siberian blizzard a couple of years ago.

My parents were both teachers, and they didn't have 'snow days'. They just went to work. I don't recall my school ever closing for snow either.

No wonder countries that have regular snow, and cope just fine, think we're pathetic.

* I RECENTLY had the pleasure of meeting an 85-year-old ballet teacher, still running her school after 60 years.

I'd expected Miss Hilda Riches to be tiny, genteel, with a powdered face and a stick. A bit like the ancient, rather terrifying, ballet teacher I had as a small child.

But Hilda was lots of fun, with a mischievous glint in her eye, and refreshingly down-to-earth. "I grew up in a back-to-back with an outside loo. I've always kept my classes affordable," she told me. "Every child should have the chance to dance. It sets you up for life." Hear, hear.