In a small central London room a fiery debate has just erupted. “I just think it’s not that simple”, says Lucy Kirkwood, 24, “female friendships are more complicated than that”. The rest of the group she is sat within sits up from their coffees, waiting for the reply of the middle-aged man chairing the meeting. “Lucy”, he says with a hint of frustration, “for me female relationships are about power, are about control. That is what all the girls we talked with have said.” There is a pause. Everyone sits back to think again and takes a swig of coffee.

On first appearances it could be a particularly engaged university tutorial. Over ten people are stuffed onto sofas, most of them in their teens and early twenties, and each has been passionately arguing their position for several hours. But there are a couple of mature students sat among the youngsters, one of whom looks suspiciously like the comedian Robin Ince. There is also a kid in the corner sipping from a juice carton who, from a different angle, could be the spitting image of Posh Kenneth from Skins. Just as everyone is about to leave a cheery announcement comes from the chair that settles any lingering confusion; “congratulations on the Bafta nomination guys!”

If you haven’t seen or let alone heard of Skins yet you are presumably a resident of a particularly out of touch old peoples home, or might have had your cable connection accidentally switched to North Korean state television. In two seasons the show’s chronicling of the trials and tribulations of a group of six form students from Bristol has gone from a semi-cult hit adored by its target audience of under 25’s to one of Channel 4’s triumphs of the last five years. Where most depictions of British teens fall somewhere between gun-totting hoodies and bleach blonde proto-WAGs, the creators of Skins pride themselves on having crafted a show about young people that neither shirks from controversial issues nor paints a overly rosy picture. Indeed, with awards, high ratings and a new season in the pipeline it seems things could not be going better.

“It’s not usually that heated”, says 23 year-old Skins co-creator Jamie Brittain an hour after the writers meeting, seemingly more relaxed now away from the creative coalface. “This time round was a little more intense than normal as we are obviously all excited about making the new series”. It would certainly be hard not to be excited in his position. Not only does he have to sort his laundry for an award ceremony later that night but his phone has been ringing constantly with mysterious calls from Japanese numbers. “The explanation for that is a bit strange really. When we were filming one of the online bits I accidentally left my phone number in one of the scenes after the edit. Now I am getting constant calls from Japan from people there who watched it”.

Being ‘big in Japan’ is of course a measure of success in any field. But it is not only the show’s ‘conventional’ success of good ratings and awards that have seen television industry types get their pantaloons in a twist. Targeting a teen audience notoriously difficult to pin down, the show’s new media promotional tools of blogs, Myspace profiles and podcasts – a development now referred to a ‘360 degree marketing’ by those in the know – has had executives across the land weeping with envy. If, for example, you felt the need to get closer to the show’s young Asian character Anwar you could check up on his Myspace page. There you would not only discover his penchant for Lethal Bizzle but would also have access to a web-exclusive video diary with the character discussing his girl problems. Head to Posh Kenneth’s page and the fan can enjoy a loving Wordsworthian ode to Jal interspersed with his signature brand of street patois. If your appetite for all things Skins was still not sated you could switch to ITunes and download the podcast presented by Daniel Kaluuya, the actor who plays Posh Kenneth and also a writer on the show. Including phone in questions from audience members and interviews with the cast, the ‘Skinscast’, as it has been termed, was at one point the most downloaded podcast on the Itunes playlist.

Alongside the overall quality of the programme itself, it seems clear that the multiplatform ingenuity of Skins has enabled it to reach and hold onto a loyal audience in ways previous shows could only dream of. It is, in its own way, the defining televisual project of the British You Tube generation. But at a point in television where television executives and producers are increasingly heralding the possibilities brought by new media platforms the 360, do the writers of the show ever feel their creation is being distorted by the marketing men?

“There is obviously a gulf between what the show says and how Skins is marketed”, says Lucy Kirkwood, one of the writers on the show. “But I think there is something quite fun about the marketing. I really like this season’s advertising campaign. It captures the spirit of the show and is quite dark.” Ben Schiffer, another writer agrees. “I think it would be really churlish of us to complain about the marketing as it brought us an audience and that’s great.”

Shiffer however sees the significant noise made about Skins’ various multiplatform tentacles more as a generational issue than something specific to the show. “Whenever I mention Skins to people its always the people who work in the media who are interested in the multiplatform stuff. They are always the people who are like ‘Skins, oh yes, it’s the big multiplatform thing and you guys have done this, this and this.’ They are the people that seem to find it so new and interesting. But for the audience I think it somehow feels natural to them. They don’t find it particularly remarkable and that is why I think it is successful. We are communicating with them on a really natural level which isn’t new or strange for them.”

Daniel Kaluuya also sees the success of the podcast he presents and the Skins blogs and Myspace presence as being more a natural progression to suit an audience that has grown up with the internet, rather than a novel marketing ploy. “The important thing to realise is that all the online stuff helps the fans get more into the characters. We just take the characters seriously. On the podcast its not like we just say, oh these are make believe characters, this is a make believe land and these things aren’t really happening. It is a TV show that quite a few people really care about and so we always take it quite seriously whether its online or not”. Schiffer agrees; “that is why Skins is perceived to be such a success – we are the only show who have really captured that audience. Advertisers are desperate to hit the audience that we’ve captured. And we work because we don’t condescend to them.”

In a suitably 21st century take on the creative process the writers also recognise the possibilities media like blogs allow them for character development. While pre-internet shows simply relied on scripts in the traditional manner, the creation of Myspace pages for the characters places a new developmental tool into the hands of the writers. “If you looked at Chris’ Myspace page last year he actually became much more fleshed out because of it”, says Lucy Kirkwood. “You see that he likes Adam and the Ants and can find out much more about his character than would be normally possible. Skins is about a group of friends and the whole appeal in the first series was about meeting a group of people you would have wanted to be friends with if you knew them. When you first make friends you sort of do what a Myspace page does by saying, do you like this or that, what are your top five bands? ‘Do you hate cheese’, ‘yeah I hate cheese’. It’s like an electronic friendship. It allows you to show a side of the characters that might seem forced if it was in the show.”

Each of the writers contributes to the online features by writing blogs and video snippets for the characters, a side to the show that allows a young pool of talent to cut their teeth away from the glare of terrestrial television before graduating to penning hour long scripts. But the writers are also quick to emphasise that they don’t see the online material being in any way less important than the show proper. “All the online material comes from the same place as the show comes from so we all try and aspire to the same level,” says Shiffer. “No one ever goes, oh its juts for the internet so we’ll just bang it out. We are trying to broaden out the universe of the show rather than juts providing lame ancillary storylines just because we heard it was a good marketing tool”.

But are they ever worried about the potential for the online content and podcast to become a gimmicky and distracting from the more serious side of the show?, “The audience doesn’t view it that way”, says Shiffer. “I don’t think our audience makes any qualitative difference between watching something on Myspace and watching something on telly. It’s not worse or immediately lower status because you watched it on the internet, its just the same thing so I don’t think it is seen as a gimmick”. Jamie agrees; “I don’t think that is the case”, he says. “The podcast did very well so it obviously reached a lot of people who don’t view it as a gimmick. All the material is very well read and very well commented on and discussed. It seems to do well in getting people talking about the show and contributing to it through competitions and that can only be a good thing”.

While they are rightly confident that the multi-platform approach has helped rather than hindered Skin’s aim of portraying British teenage life in a realistic but entertaining way, the first series’ pre-air marketing campaign (featuring a bunch of handsome actors looking elegantly wasted) gave some the wrong first impression. The Guardian’s TV critic Charlie Brooker for one said that the first episode had him “harrumphing like a four hundred year old man”. Since though Brooker and many others have repented, and now recognise the greater levels of depth the writers have strived to instil into the characterisation of storylines. Skins is now well known for featuring delicate issues in its plot lines such as anorexia, drug consumption and race.

“The first ever episode did have its faults but I think we have since shown we can deal with complicated issues and entertain young people”, says Jamie. Another writer on the show Atiha Sen Gupta agrees. “I think that is the Skins philosophy really, taking a character that could be a stereotype but doing it well. In series one we had an anorexic girl but we subverted it. That is what gives the show its strength and what makes it work.” There has also been the odd critical voice attacking the show for glamorising drug consumption and casual sex, an argument the writers feel is unjustified. “People are going to take drugs and throw big parties whether there was Skins or not”, says Sen Gupta. This is also a point Daniel Kaluuya feels particularly strongly about. “I think is was Eminem who said something about people not being able to handle looking in the mirror and not liking what they see. Skins isn’t trying to glorify drugs, people just take them. People do drugs and have sex so if we are trying to write something realistic why can’t we put them in the show?”

Puritans aside, it seems more of the British television watching public are beginning to awaken to the fact that Skins is not merely a fancy exercise in new media or empty pandering to a ‘youth demographic’, but is actually a show that could stand the test of time. On that matter Jamie, for whom the show’s characters were once merely vague ideas inside his head, is philosophical. “I think it would be arrogant of us to think we impact upon peoples lives in any major way, but its clear this show means a lot to the people who watch it. We aren’t sure how long it will go on for but we are defiantly going to do another series after the next. It means a lot to us and we just want to keep it running for as long as feels right”. And with a talented and passionate gang of writers, an innovative approach to new media, and of course all those calls from Japan, Skins could probably continue for as long as they wish.