There was clearly a moment, however brief, in the Nineties when teenage dreams stretched as far as small-town, coastal America. In fact they aimed, not just for the town, but for a single creek, Dawson’s Creek. And that creek saw emotional melodrama and swathes of verbiage as deep and as thrilling as the creek was narrow. It was thrilling because this was the apotheosis of adolescent angst reassuringly set against the comfortable, homely vision of Capeside; the feelings were risky but the territory was safe. With its inescapable and perpetual movie referencing and its casual forays into adult problems, Dawson’s Creek was also a new chapter in teenage TV, allowing (apparent) adolescents acres of screen time, hectares of lines and hedgerows of intricately plotted stories to stop the heart of any viewer. It was not, however, England. The lesser-spotted English teenager had to wait for Skins before they became identifiable on TV. If Dawson’s Creek showed teenagers how to talk with the fluency of a badly translated Freud case study, Skins shows them the world. And you know what? It’s way more fun than in the movies, but it isn’t all that comfortable or small-town homely. A visit to the writers’ room certainly explains part of this.

In a room, barely large enough for a pygmies’ drinks party, about twelve people cram together to put together the scripts for the show under the watchful presence of Brian Elsley, the creator of Skins. It isn’t all the writers for the series but it’s still quite a spread. The age range in the room is quite daunting. Elsley tops it in his mid-forties and they wind their way down to an inferiority-inducing teenage.

This tribe of writers gather together for their weekly writing meetings on two sofas and as many chairs as they can find. Two Ikea coffee tables sag under the weight of cartons of fruit juice (apple and orange), biscuits (custard creams and jammy dodgers) and a bowl of fruit (grapes and apples). You might hope that, despite the smallness of this room, everyone is at least offered a lavishly padded chair. For now they must make do with a couple of sofas, not large, and some rackety, hard chairs. In the summer heat, a fan with a suspicious safety record whirs by a window, occasionally sucking the odd lock of hair into its tenacious grip. The whir of the fan blades against the stale air offers a rather charming rhythm against which the discussions, of plot, character development, jokes and general fun, take place.