The one where FriendsFest is on
SOAP stars and TV favourites were channelling their inner Ross and Rachel, Chandler and Monica and Phoebe and Joey at the official launch night for the huge FriendsFest event at Heaton Park.
The festival celebrates all things connected to hit US sitcom Friends, with the chance to dress up as the characters, pose in replicas of the New York sets, and have a sing song in a Central Perk cafe area.
And for a host of Coronation Street stars it was a night of japes away from the dramas of Weatherfield.
Soap mother and daughter Tina O’Brien and Lucy Fallon were among the famous faces from Corrie, alongside the show’s Alexandra Mardell, who arrived in a T-shirt with the words ‘We were on a break’ - one of the most famous slogans from the show uttered by Ross to his on-off girlfriend Rachel.
And the ladies were keen to have a try of some of the fancy dress outfits - including Tina and Alexandra donning a pretend turkey with sunglasses on their head just like Monica (actress Courtney Cox) had done in a famous Friends episode.
Other outfits getting the celebs excited were the bride and groom suits in the FriendsFest ‘wedding chapel,’ including former Emmerdale star Roxanne Pallett who posed up with her boyfriend Lee Walton, and Love Island’s Kendall Rae Knight who posed up with her pals.
Hollyoaks star Jamie Lomas also went ‘red carpet public’ for the first time with his new girlfriend, Portia Hughes, who also works on the Chester-set soap.
The couple were beaming as they arrived together arm-inarm - a day after they confirmed their relationship status on adorable Instagram posts, with Jamie saying: “Sometimes in life you win the lottery.”
New for this year is a life-size replica of Ross’s apartment, complete with the Pottery Barn apothecary table that rumbled Rachel’s lie to Phoebe that their identical piece came from a flea market, and copies of the gang’s favourite films like Die Hard - on VHS of course.
Fans can also step inside a fullscale recreation of Monica’s apartment, sit in the canoe and play foosball at Joey and Chandler’s place (look out for the copy of The Shining in the freezer) and the hallway in between them.
The rooms are built by theatre set designers based on blueprints sent over from the Warner Bros archive in Los Angeles, with every single touch signed off by both the studio and Comedy Central.
This year’s event was so popular organisers added an extra weekend on August 18 and 19 after tickets sold out for the original run, from August 3 to 12.