Friends writer lifts lid on the odd reason why Phoebe and Joey never hooked up

David Crane is one of the two creative geniuses who created the 90s TV sitcom Friends, but for years fans have been “annoyed” at him and Marta Kauffman for not putting two main characters together.

Out of the six main characters, there was always two clear couples who would end up together.

Rachel Green (Jennifer Aniston) and Ross Geller (David Schwimmer) were always destined to be together, and although Monica Geller (Courteney Cox) and Chandler Bing (Matthew Perry) were a shock at first, it made perfect sense.

However, fans have always argued that Phoebe Buffay (Lisa Kudrow) and Joey Tribbiani (Matt LeBlanc) would have been the “most perfect couple”.

As the series ended, Joey remained single and Phoebe married Mike Hannigan (Paul Rudd) and some fans were left gutted by David and Marta’s choice not to write them into a love story.

But now, David has explained to Metro.co.uk why the pair “had to remain just friends”.

David said: “It all would have been too tidy and too complete.

“When your goal is to keep the six characters in stories together, it would be really easy to go down that road but I think we all felt it would be a mistake.”

David also explained that the writers had to consider the “rollercoaster” viewers went on during Ross and Rachel’s love story.

He continued: “Because we’d done Ross and Rachel we had to give Monica and Chandler another set of challenges.”

“And so their whole journey of how they ended up together and having babies it needed to be different.

“I think that’s the biggest challenge of doing a show for 10 years.”

However, although they never ended up being each other’s lobsters, they did clearly love each other very much as friends.

In one episode they even shared the “perfect kiss”, while they also kissed in another episode when Phoebe pretended to be her twin Ursula as she dumped Joey for her.

In the later series, Joey sweetly proposed to Phoebe when he thought she was pregnant as he didn’t want her to be alone with a baby.

This is one couple who just sadly wasn’t meant to be…