Why Ross from Friends is not cool

The actor David Schwimmer has knocked down his 19th-century town house in New York, enraged his neighbours and provoked one of them to write grafitti on the front of his new home

Oh, Ross … Sorry, I do know it’s David Schwimmer and that you last acted in Friends a decade ago, but it’s not just me who can’t forget the guy you used to be. Your new neighbours in Manhattan are struggling to forget the goofy paleontologist they once loved too. Especially since you bought a house built in 1852 – suitably ancient, by New York standards – and then, months before it could receive landmark status, decided to knock it all down. (“Pivot. Pivot. PIVOT!”)

Not only did you demolish this nearly listed building and construct a spanking new house in its place, but the work has been going on for years, still isn’t finished, and now a disgruntled local has graffiti-sprayed ROSS IS NOT COOL on the front. I can almost see you flinging your not-guilty hands in the air, saying it isn’t your fault and that you and that house – “We were on a break!”

The thing is, though, poor Ross was never cool. In fact, nobody in Friends was ever cool. They were nerds with a unique faith in their own neuroses, which was why we loved them so much – and why we never thought they would go round demolishing historic buildings like the squillionaires they really are. When Ross – I mean Schwimmer – married a young Brit, apparently a part-time waitress from Stoke Newington, it only added to his paleontologist-of-the-people vibe.

But now, when I come to think of it, the One Where Ross Buys A House And All His New Neighbours Hate Him is pure Friends. Because taking down a cool old townhouse on the lower East Side and turning it into a 90s swankpad, complete with penthouse and elevator, is probably just about the uncoolest thing you can do in NYC.