Can you believe Skins is 10 years old this year? The passage of time is terrifying

Remember being 14? Remember putting on your BEATS NOT BOMBS luminous Nu-Rave t-shirt and blasting Alice Practice by Crystal Castles and pretending you did anything more hardcore than weed as you went to the most suburban subdued house parties of all time? Yes, you do. And you remember it all so vividly for one reason only: you fucking loved Skins.

Here’s why.

Effy. Just Effy

As a teenager, Effy was basically the zenith of coolness. Everyone wanted to have Skins parties, everyone wanted to be her (or get with her, which only made people want to be her more). Even at her worst hormonal-bipolar-druggy-drama-queen moments she was unflappable. Maybe she was supposed to be a cautionary tale, but she made everything look  glamorous, and that was the dream.

Can anyone honestly say they didn’t envy her strangely drugged-up exciting life in inexplicably dangerous but protected Bristolian suburbia? Can anyone really pretend they didn’t buy a black leather jacket and try to get a boyfriend as fit as Freddie, before realising that boys who still liked skateboarding that much in sixth form were actually just really weird?

She was effortlessly stylish, she took no shit, she went to the best parties and as shit as it got for her, it always (kind of) turned out OK. Effy was the dream.

Sid’s breakdown mid-Crystal Castles gig (AKA the most noughties thing ever)

Crystal Castles, according to the oracle that is Wikipedia, are an experimental electronic band who formed in 2003 and released a trilogy of critically acclaimed albums between 2008 and 2012. But obviously everyone knows Crystal Castles for that one song they did in Skins (Alice Practice) and how Sid was really sad and stared at them while they screamed because of his t e e n a g e  a n g s t. My in-my-twenties-now breakdowns don’t look half as pained and over the top and intense as this, but oh how I wish they did.

Skins USA and how awful it was and how cool it made Skins seem by comparison

Most Americans are deeply, inherently uncool. This is a fact. So it makes sense that the shortlived, ill-fated American adaptation of Skins makes normal UK Skins (which yes, you can now look back on and understand it’s very very cringe), seem like utter debauchery by comparison. There are several reasons why it’s bad: for instance, they change Tony’s name to Tony Schneider (Schneider!). Also the trailer looks like this.

Some bleeding hearts accused it of being child pornography and eventually it was cancelled. Thank god.

I’m Katie Fucking Fitch Who The Fuck Are You

If you don’t think this is the best way to stand up to bitches in the club then you’re wrong and you don’t deserve to speak.

Also, now she’s a bodybuilder. So there’s that.

Hating Abigail but also, like, loving hating Abigail

Abigail, the horsey, haughty taughty bully from the posh school who fancied Tony and hated Michelle, was the epitome of every mean girl from your school (or the posher school). She kissed Tony at the end of their cringe choir concert and she also calls Michelle “a fucking flat-chested cocksucking spastic horse fucker”, which, as Sid rightly points, is wrong because Michelle would never, ever fuck a horse.

The general aesthetic (getting to dress like this unironically)

MC Hugo

This is MC Hugo. MC Hugo first appeared in episode 1 of Skins and reappeared at every shit house party you’ve ever been to at uni, when Tarquin persuades his flatmate to get out the decks mummy bought him for Christmas but only if we’re super careful guys they’re very expensive and we’re only really supposed to get them out for birthdays, yeah, and he wants to use them to start his music career next year with a set at Love Saves The Day.

It gave us the greatest musical of all time

Answer me this: it’s been 16 years, why hasn’t there been more musicals about 9/11?