A NEW TV programme, reuniting old school chums, will hit our screens tomorrow night.

Hosted by Zoe Ball, it reveals what has happened to the class swat, class troublemaker and those unruly pupils who got up to all sorts of tomfoolery behind the bike sheds.

And with the hugely popular website, Friends Reunited there is no excuse for not keeping in touch, or an eye on, your old school mates.

Karen Stephen takes a trip down her very own Memory Lane and visited her old school, Scarisbrick Hall in Ormskirk, to see if she could hook up with her old pals. SCHOOL days are supposed to be the best days of your life -- and I have to say mine were pretty good.

Everytime I hear Elton John and Kiki Dee burst into Don't Go Breaking My Heart, I am swiftly transported back to the sweltering summer of 1976 -- the year I took my O levels -- and my final year at Scarisbrick Hall were days were spent "baking out" near the tennis courts and gossiping about who we fancied.

I had lost touch with all my school pals over the years but then I discovered Friends Reunited -- a phenomenally successful website allowing people to contact old school friends, or simply find out what everyone was up to.

I, along with millions of others, have become addicted to the site.

You simply add your name with, if you wish, a brief description of what you are doing. I thought long and hard about what to put. Everyone else seemed to have had amazing lives, live in beautiful parts of the world -- Caribbean, Denver, Chicago -- and lead "TV advert" lives.

I put "married, with a child, working as a journalist".

Surprisingly people seemed keen on contacting me. I received replies from people I remembered fondly, some I just remembered and others who I hadn't a clue who they were.

I was even contacted by my school sweetheart, the love of my life in the fourth and fifth form.

Peter Single was blond, tall and one of the best football players in the school. He was in the year above me and I had a crush on him for years.

Sadly he didn't have one on me. Until I grew into my uniform shall we say.

He was into Deep Purple, Monty Python and wanted to be a vet and live in Norfolk (no, I never understood why either). Now he is happily married with two children and, guess what, isn't a vet but does live in Norfolk. One out of two isn't bad.

We have communicated by e-mail a couple of times and he says he remembers the summer of '76 with fondness. Ah, happy days.

However, the best contact I made was with one of my best friends at Scarisbrick Hall.

Rochelle was small, pretty and with an enviable mane of strawberry blonde hair -- she looked like young Mia Farrow -- and she and I were also best friends with Michelle who was equally pretty and sported waist-length platinum blonde hair. My hair was brown.

Nevertheless we were inseparable all through school and Rochelle and I have now resumed contact.

She is still quite stunning and a happily married mother living in the Manchester area.

We e-mail, talk on the phone and meet up for lunch when we can. Sadly I have not managed to contact the other member of our trio yet, but I'm still trying.

I have also been contacted by another classmate, Lynn who, in turn, has put me in touch with other girls I was really friendly with. We all plan to meet up later in the year.

I can't wait to see how we have changed. A good idea changed creators' lives STEVE and Julie Pankhurst are the co-founders of Friends Reunited.

It all started a couple of years ago when Julie, aged 35, was pregnant with their daughter.

Steve, aged 38, explained: "Julie was sat at home and started wondering what her old mates from school where doing -- did they still live in the area, did they have kids -- that sort of thing.

"She thought it would make a good website and went on at me to do something.

"I set up a general notice board and soon quite a few people had added their names. Julie was convinced it was a great idea."

Steve didn't do anything about it for the next six months. "Then, one day, I thought I'd better sort it out because Julie was still going on about it."

Which is just what he did. That was the summer of 2000 and within nine months the website had 20,000 names.

To date, five million people have joined Friends Reunited in the UK.

Both Steve and Julie, who were computer programmers by profession, admit they cannot believe how successful the site is.

Steve said: "I think it is because everyone is basically nosy and wants to know what others are doing."

They have just launched work Friends which can be reached via Friends Reunited and are considering expanding abroad.

They still work from their home in Barnet, a third partner has a small office in Oxford, and Steve says they have not made millions of pounds.

Not yet anyway. Keep in touch with your old pals via the BEN's website at thisisbolton.co.uk