At 22, I’m not exactly hitting retirement, but nothing made me feel older then the Friday I came home for a quiet night in with Ugly Betty, only to find a group of beautiful 17-year-olds spread-eagled across my living room. I thought I’d walked into a D&G ad. My younger brother led the pack, him and his guy pals dressed in neon-coloured Topman hoodies, gathered round the Wii. The girls, in Hennes leggings and fluoro Converse, passed around cans of Strongbow purchased at the local Costcutter and chatted about how they’re totally cool with their boyfriends borrowing their GHDs to work on their fringes. Somewhere in the background, a “really old” New Young Pony Club song was playing. As I watched them knock back the cheap cider, I asked them about their plans for the evening. “Oh, just the cinema,” someone replied.

Getting drunk before a movie? Of course, it’s the natural way to get down if you’re not quite old enough to hit the clubs. Note, however, that the intention isn’t to take in the film. How passé. Popcorn will be thrown, iPods played loud and booze snuck in. Not that my brother, named Louis by his mates, is a thuggish, Asbo-deserving so-and-so. Hell, no. The local cinema is a dive that shows rubbish movies – and Louis once gave me a look of total disgust when he found out I didn’t know who Jean-Luc Godard is.

You see, Louis and his crew are just like the MySpace-loving, totally clued-up, rave-ready poster children of the Channel 4 show Skins. Not that they copy any of the characters in the show. It’s more a case of the Skins cast just doing what normal, hip teens do these days.

When I was Louis’s age (all those years ago), I thought being trendy was all about pouting and brandishing copies of hip magazines. My brother acts like being cool is just a pain in the arse, along with mock A-level exams and when his MP3 player runs out of batteries. Real cool, to him, is being silly and loving it. It’s about throwing fancy-dress parties on a weekly basis (check Pirates of the Caribbean, Superheroes and Literary Icons for recent themes), but if you’ve seen Skins, you will know that it’s all about daft behaviour, throwing a rave when your folks are away and having a heated discussion about the relevance of Bret Easton Ellis. It’s like the time I came home just before Christmas to find a fluffy, all-in-one reindeer outfit hanging in Louis’s wardrobe. “Oh, how cute. Did you buy this for the occasion?” I asked. “Nah,” he replied with a shrug, putting down his book on contemporary cinematography. “I nicked it backstage at the Klaxons gig. I’m wearing it to a foam party next week.”

And then there is the undeniable fact that all Louis’s friends are incredibly good-looking. Maybe there’s something in the air these days, but if you’re surprised by any of this, you shouldn’t be. Today, we should expect our younger siblings to be just as cool as us, if not cooler – and much sooner than we expected. I, for example, won’t raise an eyebrow (or, at least, I will try not to) when Louis remembers to buy a copy of the new Hot Chip album way before I do.

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