Chrissie Hynde “always regretted” her guest appearance in Friends because it ruined her anonymity on the school run.

The legendary rocker appeared in the 1995 season two episode, The One with the Baby on the Bus, as Stephanie Schiffer – the rival of Phoebe Buffay (Lisa Kudrow), who was hired by the owner of the fictional New York coffee shop, Central Perk, to sing to its customers, including songs Angel of the Morning, and Phoebe’s iconic track, Smelly Cat.

Hynde, 74, was oblivious to the sitcom – which ran from 1994 until 2004 – until Warner Records asked her to sing Angel of the Morning on an album to accompany the release of Friends.

In a fan Q+A for The Guardian, The Pretenders frontwoman explained.

“I’d never heard of it, but Warners were putting out an album to accompany this new show and asked me for a song, Angel of the Morning,” she said.

“Then Friends asked me if I could sit in the background in a coffee shop playing it. I got to go to Los Angeles for a week and see my friend but I didn’t know they’d written a whole part for me.”

“Then Friends was on the cover of every American magazine. I thought, ‘Oh f***, this is gonna be big.'”

As well as Kudrow, Hynde said the other cast members, including Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, Matt Le Blanc, Courteney Cox and the late Matthew Perry, were “really nice”.

But what she didn’t like about doing Friends was that it caused people to recognise her when she took her two daughters to school.

“I always regretted it because until then I could take my kids to school and nobody knew who I was,” the five-time Grammy nominee said.

“Afterwards, all the kids were saying, ‘Your mom’s on Friends!'”