This is how much it would actually cost to rent Monica’s apartment in Friends

Could The Rembrandts have been singing about debt collectors in their Friends theme tune, I’ll Be There for You?

Considering how some of the show’s characters were able to afford prime real estate in New York City’s trendy West Village on salaries earned as jobbing actors, waitresses, masseuses and middling IT managers, we’re just surprised a pair of burly security types weren’t there for them sooner.

Heck, even the cast of the show – at one stage the highest paid actors on television – must have had their own inner grumblings when comparing Monica’s roomy apartment, boasting two bedrooms, balcony and airy kitchen backing onto a plush living room, to their own dwellings.

And if you’re wondering how much Monica’s flat would cost IRL, The New York Post has now worked it out

$4,500 (£3,125) per month - 'at least'.

The paper even offered this semi plausible explanation as to how a bunch of twenty somethings came to occupy such a spot:

“It’s safe to assume they could never afford prices for a pad that spacious if they were paying market rent. (It’s understood that Monica took on her grandma’s rent-controlled status, but Joey and Chandler wouldn’t have such breaks.) Chandler’s job in IT probably helped boost their collective incomes, but if they were to rent the same spaces today, at least one Friend would definitely need a guarantor.

Or perhaps it’s just because there’s a strange man regularly found flashing downstairs.