Jo Brand on Kissing

MUSIC: "Kiss" by Prince

This programme contains some strong language.

I'm hardly the repressed type, but it seems to me

that there's far too much kissing going on these days, especially in public.

We seem to be obliged to give each other a peck on the cheek all the time.

And the slippery, slimy, with-tongues kiss

seems to have broken out of the back row of the cinema and invaded our streets.

Yes, kissing may be a lovely idea,

but I don't want particularly watch people going at it,

all tongues blazing and eating each other's faces off.

Mwah! I'm going to be exploring why we kiss,

what a kiss really means, what a kiss does inside our brains...

..and our bodies.

It is very romantic, isn't it? Very romantic.

And if we really are the only creatures who lock lips

in a slippery face-off.

-Give us a kiss, then.

-Thank you.

And, if this kissing thing turns out to be worthwhile,

I might have to find my own dream kisser to pucker up with.

Yeah, possibly.

# Kiss. #

Kiss.

Kiss.

Another one, my God, it seems to be going on everywhere.

So irritating, isn't it, the way people turn their cheek towards you for a kiss?

I mean, how bleeding presumptuous is that?

You don't kiss anyone, they have to kiss you.

Well, I'll give you a Barnsley kiss, if you want.

That's a head butt for anyone from the south.

And as for the trendy lot,

if I see one more botoxed pair of lips aimed in my direction,

I'll give them one in the smacker,

and I don't mean a kiss, darling.

And how often do people really mean a kiss? Mwah!

Lovely to see you. Haven't cleaned my teeth this morning,

or yesterday for that matter.

Mwah! Lovely to meet you, I'm the new girl in the office -

you'll be kissing my arse before too long.

Mwah! How lovely to see you again, aren't you the couple that

so publicly displayed your marital difficulties at the last parents' evening?

That was buttock clenching.

If a kiss has a value it seems to have got lost somewhere for me,

so I'm on my way to see Paul Taylor, who's a professor of communications,

to find out what he thinks about the kiss.

When you have all this kissing,

there is this pervasive cheapening of something that should be private.

We've gone from The Brief Encounter type emotional constipation,

-"Hello darling, would you like another cup of tea, darling?"

-Yeah.

And I think that repression,

the upside of repression is it's all more exciting

whereas now, you know, five Red Bulls and vodka and everyone's at it.

To me, it's sort of the more it's done,

the more it kind of loses its value, really.

A kiss is a upward persuasion for the downward invasion.

Crikey.

And I do think this is why kissing is interesting because,

on the one hand it can be incredibly innocent -

you can kiss a child good night -

and it also, obviously, can be a prelude for further relations.

So do you think, to some extent, that kissing has lost its meaning then?

If you think the Bible is book ended, at the beginning God breathes life into Adam

and at the very end you have the kiss of betrayal, Judas and Jesus.

So there's that level of cultural significance

and then there's the banality of XXX after an e-mail or a text message.

-Yes.

-So it encompasses the whole range of human experience.

Well, I think that Paul and I are broadly in agreement

about the fact that the kiss has kind of lost its way a bit,

but a lot of what he said to me about kissing

was quite surprising stuff that I hadn't really thought about.

It also makes me wonder whether, in fact,

we humans are the only creatures that do kiss each other.

'So I'm going to Twycross Zoo to see our closest ape relatives -

'the bonobo monkeys.'

'Donna Smithson is the keeper of these rather cheeky bonobos.

'She's touchingly dedicated to her charges and seems to know them

'probably better than her own family.'

They've all got different personalities, so it's quite nice.

There's Diatou with the youngster on her, there.

-She's the oldest female we've got.

-Right.

Yes, she's a really good mum as well.

Yes, she's very funny, they're all funny. I like them all, really.

-Do you want to come inside and have a closer look?

-Oh yes, please, love to.

'The keepers rarely venture into the bonobos' living area

'and I'm about to find out one of the reasons why.'

-Got a visitor.

-Hello.

So by putting her hand through there, is she trying to get me to hold her hand?

Yeah, and then she'll probably pull it.

Then obviously as soon as they would hear you go, "Oh, my God."

All of them could just pile. You get my meaning?

-What would they do, would they bite?

-They do bite, yeah.

Would they bite my hand, or would they...?

-I can't guarantee what they would do but...

-..give me a manicure?

I can't say, I've never been in a position and wouldn't want anyone to be in that position.

-Quite.

-So they're just testing you.

-Do the bonobos kiss each other?

-Yes, they do,

it's not a behaviour that they do quite a lot, but it's known.

There is footage and pictures of bonobos kissing each other,

French kissing in the bonobo book, it says...

-That's quite steamy, isn't it?

-Yeah, tongues and all.

But if they do a kissing, it's like, they will just go to each other's mouth and be like,

"Hello, are you all right?" sort of thing, and it's a gesture.

They'll use it to calm each other down or will be saying hello.

They can use it in any sort of context, really.

Here's some footage of bonobos kissing.

A young male and an adult male.

Blimey.

They're getting stuck in there.

That looks like proper romantic snogging to me.

Yeah, it isn't, they're just having a bit of fun, really.

Oh, yes, tongues, my word.

-Males and males do a lot of sexual things.

-Do they?

-Yeah.

Anal mating, they do a lot of anal mating,

a lot of holding each other's testicles.

Is that just for fun?

-Well, they just do it when they're worried...

-Ahh.

..when there's been a fight and things like that.

It's just a reassurance thing.

I've never thought of anal sex as reassuring!

That's an interesting approach. That's great.

Well. Yes, it is!

# Listen when I tell ya You got no time for fix

# Cos I just gotta make it Can't afford to miss

# And there's one reason I'm tellin' you this I feels bad

# And I'm a-lookin' for a kiss. #

If our closest ape relatives kiss each other,

then I suppose, kissing must come quite naturally to us... you'd have thought.

But kissing is fraught with dangers.

To try to avoid some of the pitfalls, I'm on my way to a workshop

held by the psychologist from Big Brother, Judi James,

on the etiquette of kissing for businessmen and women.

Hi, good morning, I'm Judi James,

I'm a body language and behavioural expert

and I specialise in things like greeting rituals,

how we approach people, how we build rapport with people in business.

Straight away you can fast-track rapport, or not,

if you do a bad greeting.

You do intentional gestures - as you walk up to somebody you've either got your hand out or,

if you're going to do an air kiss,

in the UK it would generally be you would approach them slightly like that.

Don't look as if you're going to over-hug, but very lightly put your hands up, like that.

My hands would then go on to your shoulders very lightly,

I would bend forward, you'd go right cheek to right cheek

and then left cheek to left cheek, and that's it.

We do a lot of networking in business,

so what I'm going to ask you to do, if Jo would like to walk into the event

and I'm going to get her to break into a group.

Can you look as though you're milling around just at a networking event?

I don't mind air kissing them, but I have got quite a bad cold.

It's no problem.

And herpes, I've also got syphilis,

so it's probably not going to get that far.

I'm sure they won't mind.

0K, fair enough.

'Oh, God, now I've got to win these people over with the perfect business kiss.'

Hi, everyone, hello.

-Hello.

-Hi.

-Hi, nice to meet you all, I'm Jo.

I've got my own business, it's worth about three quid.

So you won't be very impressed by me,

but I'd like to talk to you about it. Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you, too. Whoa, wrong side!

Nice to meet you, how are you doing?

Oh, no, we've let go hands and it all went hideously wrong.

Nice to meet you. Hello, that's nice and quick.

So anyway, I think my business has failed, probably,

just from my very bad greeting.

And you're all looking at me like I'm mad, which I am.

-How was that, Judi?

-It was terrible!

LAUGHTER

That's why they're all slightly shell shocked!

Number one, you broke into the group almost physically, by force,

you actually grabbed his elbow, which would feel quite weird

if you didn't see somebody standing there.

You should think yourself lucky I didn't push them out of the way and go, "Shut up."

Which I was tempted to do.

Then you got stuck in with the greetings.

In fact, you were pretty good, I have to say,

you did keep up a commentary though,

and it was interesting that you did a slightly different greeting with each one.

You may think people wouldn't notice, but they do

because there's so much involved in status and everything.

People will think, well, why was she more formal with that one that she was...

Oh, really? You have to do exactly the same greeting with everyone?

-Pretty much, but make it look fresh every time.

-Oh, God.

The coffee break couldn't come soon enough

and I sneaked off for a word with Judi about how kissing etiquette has changed.

We've become more demonstrative but, the trouble is,

we don't then know the etiquette of doing it.

At the same time there's this kind of pseudo-sexual element

that, if you get it wrong, can creep in and it almost leaves a nasty taste in your mouth.

You know, you think, "Oh, my God, their lips actually touched,

"Oh, I've got their spit on my cheek,"

or, "they made that horrible sexy noise when they did it."

So it's quite dangerous, there's a lot of undercurrents.

Hello, I'm Jo, a pleasure to meet you.

-Nice to meet you.

-That was good.

I think Clinton used to say to his entourage,

the more affectionate the greeting, the more I want you to get rid of that person.

So sometimes, you get in sort of American business, a hug and a squeeze

and you think this is great - the meeting's going to go really well,

but what they're actually signalling is that the more intimate they are,

the less they want to do business with you.

So it's all a bit back-to-front.

Because I always thought the Clinton greeting was straight down for a blow job.

I'm wrong there, again.

You see that's why my social etiquette is so off-kilter.

Hello, I'm Jo, have you got any condoms?

Sorry.

If humankind has reached the stage of a rather meaningless kiss being a deal-breaker,

it makes me wonder where all this kissing business began in the first place.

The first erotic human kisses we come across

come from 3,500-year-old Indian scrolls.

And then they pop up a bit later in the Kama Sutra.

Along with a lot of other hanky-panky that we couldn't possibly show on telly.

Mmm. Well, I hope they didn't do THAT in plain sight.

So how long has all this ghastly kissing in public been going on?

I'm off to see historian Karen Harvey to find out.

Karen, now I have this thing about kissing,

social kissing, air kissing, and kind of tonguey, snoggy kissing a lot in public.

And there seems to be more of it - has it always been like this?

No, not at all. If you look at the historical record,

kissing is always represented

in this religious context,

but in the Medieval and Renaissance periods

people would have been most familiar with the kiss of peace.

That's a kiss that's handed from a member of the congregation

to the next member of the congregation.

Sometimes physically, but more commonly via what's called a pax-board.

So one member of the congregation would kiss the board

and then pass it to the next member of the congregation

and it's a bonding kiss.

But there's another kiss, that people would have been familiar with,

and this is the kiss of shame

and it's a direct inversion of the kiss of peace.

So the kiss of shame shows that you're bound to evil

and to the devil.

The kiss of shame is something that people thought was undertaken by witches.

And that's placed on the devil's arse or the devil's anus.

Crikey.

Why kiss the devil's arse and not somewhere else on the devil,

like his mouth, or his face?

It's because kissing the devil's arse is foul.

It's just polluted.

You know, it's the dirtiest place.

So is that where the phrase, kiss my arse came from?

I have no idea!

That all changes really, in the late 17th and 18th century.

I think two really important things happen at this point.

The first thing that happens is that people start to talk about the kiss as a greeting

or a gesture of farewell.

So this is all about the kiss in social situations

and you might say that it's here,

that's where our modern practice of air kissing

and public kissing stems from.

The second thing that happens,

and I think this leaves a really important legacy for the modern world,

is that the kiss becomes eroticised

to a degree that it hasn't been before.

At least in the art historical record.

So you get lots of books and images of lovers kissing.

# It started with a kiss... #

So the kiss has been on a steady upward progression,

how much worse is its unstoppable rise going to get?

And why is touching our lips together

such an apparently desirable thing to do in the first place?

Well, I'm visiting cognitive behavioural therapist Dr George Fieldman to try to find out.

In the lips,

there are lots of muscles

and lots of nerve endings.

So when you touch your lips,

it's represented in the brain quite powerfully.

This is a map of the somatosensory cortex

and here you can see large lips and small rest of the body.

That means that the lips are represented very dominantly in the somatosensory cortex.

So those areas that are big, they are much more sensitive?

-To two-point discrimination, yes.

-Right.

-That's the theory, and I want to test that out on you.

-OK.

Do your worst.

-0K, I want you to shut your eyes.

-Yes.

-And tell me if it is one or two.

-OK.

'I'm hoping, dear viewer, that seeing my lips

'being poked with a Q-tip

'is better than seeing any more snogging.'

Two.

And again two.

One.

Two.

One.

Two.

We are now going to test your arm, to see if there's any difference

in your ability to differentiate two separate points.

God, one.

One.

One!

So on your lips, you could tell these points apart

when they were as close as that,

say a couple of millimetres.

On your arm, we were that sort of distance,

-something like six centimetres apart.

-Yes.

-You couldn't tell two from one at all clearly on your arm.

-Incredible.

A remarkable difference between those two.

'But how did we start kissing on the lips in the first place?'

It is unlikely, in my view, that lips evolved for kissing.

They would have originally been used for taking in food,

probably kiss feeding, when a mother pre-masticates food,

chews it up and then puts it into the infant's mouth, and for speaking.

All those things would be directly linked with survival.

Originally, are we saying, that lips weren't really kind of meant for kissing?

Probably lips adapted for kissing

because there's my lots of sensation there

and when two lips kiss, it's usually a preamble to sex.

So the lips became our kissing gear

and all those nerve endings in them, getting stimulated,

makes for a blinking messy orgy of exploding synapses and gushing hormones.

The level of the hormone oxytocin increases,

encouraging feelings of affection and attachment.

The level of the stress hormone cortisol decreases, making you more relaxed.

I see where this is going now. Oh, find a room!

Kissing also releases serotonin,

so much so that you can feel euphoric for up to two hours afterwards.

I've never been euphoric for two minutes, let alone two hours.

Basically, kissing makes for a brain chemical concoction designed to get our genes excited

that there's a bit of wahey on the way.

0K, stop right there.

I really don't like to see this overactive snogging in public,

so I'm heading indoors.

I'm hoping to discover some downsides to kissing.

Maybe it's not good for you! Perhaps we can get it banned...

It just gets worse.

Apparently kissing lowers your blood pressure and cholesterol.

Burns off more calories than going for a swim.

Oh, bugger.

Fights tooth decay as well.

Apparently 10% of the world don't kiss,

or else they're discreet enough not to do it in front of the people

that research this sort of thing.

Surely there must be SOME people who don't kiss?

Well, I've always understood that sex workers don't kiss,

so I've asked sex work researcher and activist Jo Doezema

to meet me for a nice cup of tea, to ask her if it's true.

-Hello, Jo.

-Hello, Jo.

-I'm Jo. Nice to see you.

I'm Jo, nice to see too.

Now, Jo, I don't really know why I think this,

but I must have discussed it with people over the years,

but I believe it to be true that sex workers, on the whole,

don't tend to want to kiss their clients,

because it's something that's far too intimate for them to do

because it's just, if you like, a financial transaction between them.

Am I right there?

It's interesting. You're not completely wrong. You're a bit right.

On the one hand, there are those sex workers that feel it's too intimate,

but there's actually

a whole swathe of other sex workers,

and I would say more, who do provide kissing

-and who have marketed it very skilfully as the girlfriend experience.

-Oh, really?

And the girlfriend experience is just like what it says,

it involves kissing, touching, it involves intimacy,

and it's incredibly popular.

I've found that, actually, among the sex workers I've spoken to,

the demand for kissing is huge - much more, actually, than for any other service.

It's the first question that they get asked, "do you kiss?"

-I'm really surprised about that.

-I know, I know - isn't that strange?

So, in many ways, men are actually romantics, really,

and they're looking for the whole package of a romantic experience

rather than just a quick chug, as it were?

What's maybe even more interesting, certainly surprising to me

was it's not just clients who are interested in the intimacy of a kiss.

This one sex worker that I spoke to

explained how if she was having sex with a man, a client,

and he didn't kiss her, how it made her feel dirty and bad

and as if he didn't consider her good enough to be kissed.

That's really interesting though, isn't it?

That's the sort of traditional view that a lot of people in society hold of sex workers,

-that they shouldn't expect any more than money out of it.

-Yes, exactly.

Sex workers I've talked to mention the fact when you're kissing someone,

you're there and they're there and the connection is there.

We know how easy it is to drift away when you're having sex.

You can just, there you go, proverbial laundry list.

-Shopping list, yes.

-Exactly.

Because you're sort of right there,

you can't kind of watch telly over their shoulder.

No, you can't!

When you're kissing someone, it's much more difficult.

You're there, you're aware, you have a real connection with somebody.

So how much, if you paying say 50 quid for half an hour,

how much extra would kissing cost?

Probably 20 or 30.

And how much would it cost to have someone to say, "your hair looks really nice?"

Priceless.

Well, can I just say, you've opened up a whole new world for me in terms of,

you've sort of slashed my preconceptions to bits

and that's great, you know,

and made me feel kind of hopeful about it, in a way,

and also quite made me want to do it,

and also made me want to give you a kiss!

So, thank you very much.

-Oh, lovely.

-Cheers.

'So if the kiss can be worth money...'

I'm sure absolutely no kissing goes on in there, apart from on the balcony

when there's a royal wedding.

'..what other power does it have?'

When I think back to the '80s, when I really came of age politically,

it makes me think there's one person I really do need to go and talk to about this.

Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell is someone I've always admired,

chiefly because he's never been prepared to just accept the world as it is

and, amazingly enough, he's campaigned in the past about public kissing.

People have said things to me like,

how kind of significant and beautiful the kiss is, but,

particularly from your point of view,

I mean it's a very powerful symbol in a way,

isn't it and has huge political significance?

Can you tell me something about that?

Historically, for gay and lesbian couples, the right to kiss in public

has been a very important historic battle.

Until 1990, same-sex couples in London,

never mind the rest of the country,

were being arrested for kissing and cuddling in public

when comparable behaviour by heterosexual couples

merited no attention by the police whatsoever.

So was there kind of a formal law

forbidding gay couples from kissing in public?

It was never an explicit, specific crime,

but what the police did was arrest lesbian and gay couples for kissing

using other legislation such as outraging public decency,

behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace and, using the Public Order Act provisions,

behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress.

Since the police made kissing in public a political and criminal issue,

we decided to take them on.

That's why in September of 1990, the gay rights group Outrage,

which I was involved with, staged a mass kiss-in in Piccadilly Circus.

We got 300 couples to turn up

and issued the ultimatum to the police, "If you think this law is worth defending,

"come and arrest us.

"Otherwise, give us notice that from now on the law will not be enforced against us."

I'm really proud to say that, one hour before the protest began,

the Metropolitan Police sent us a note saying, "0K, you've won.

"From this moment onwards, in the Metropolitan Police area,

"no same-sex couple will be arrested for merely kissing and showing affection."

What a fantastic coup.

The kiss-in became a celebration of a victory,

rather than a protest.

-Here's a couple of photographs from one of the kiss-ins.

-Oh, right.

There's two guys going at it. Is that offensive to you?

No, they don't look like they're what I call going at it,

they just look like they're having a nice kiss.

-OK. Here afterwards in the park, when people were celebrating.

-Oh, right.

Another couple, quite clearly celebrating with a beer.

Yes, indeed, fair enough.

They're great, no, I don't have an issue with those at all.

Good.

Fantastic, so we're getting there.

A bit more therapy and you...!

I know, I know.

So I'm off for some more slimy snog analysis then.

If the kiss has power, does it actually have beauty too?

Well, I'm going to look at some kissing art,

at the Wellcome Collection, but I'm not sure I'll like it.

These sculptures are casts of the insides of people's mouths

while they are locked in a passionate tongues-in job.

I must say, they seem pretty grotesque to me.

All teeth, gums and wiggly bits.

# If you hear

# A song in blue

# Like a flower crying for the dew

# That was my heart

# Serenading you

# My prelude to a kiss. #

For me, in a lot of ways, they don't really bear any relation to the human mouth

because they just don't look like it.

For example, that one there looks like a horse

that's had its jaw broken. 'Mmm.

'To find out more, I've arranged to meet the artist, Charlie Murphy.'

-Hello, Charlie.

-Hi.

-Nice to meet you.

So you're responsible for these glorious creations?

I am, yes.

I started it with my own kisses.

That was kind of, er,

my early experiments where I was trying to kind of visualise

what it was like to see what a kiss looked like.

I experimented with kissing different people.

Did you indeed?

I did and I got into a bit of trouble!

Then I thought, OK, it's much more acceptable to kind of open it out

and see if people would donate their cast to my collection.

I've got a couple here that you can see a bit more closely.

This is an example, I'll just hand it to you...

You're looking from the back of the mouth

-through the other person's mouth.

-You can see teeth, can't you?

You can, you can see the back of the upper and the lower palate

and, actually, if you look further through,

you can see somebody's tongue coming towards you.

Yeah, why the particular moment of the kiss, then?

Why do you think that's important?

Well, I think it's a really precious moment

and it's something I wanted to kind of visualise

what these expressions of desire look like from the inside.

My husband says I've got a massive gob,

so I reckon mine would look like the batcave.

Charlie had some couples arriving to make some more of these snog sculptures

and she wants me to lend a hand.

OK. 'The initial kiss imprint is made with dental putty.'

-In there?

-Yes, please.

-All in one go?

-All in one go. Lovely.

-Who's going to go first?

-It looks quite nice, doesn't it?

A sort of blancmangey kind of pink, isn't it?

Now, unless you've just switched on the telly,

you'll know I don't like seeing kissing in public very much

but I'll make an exception if I get to stuff something in their mouths first.

Take as much as you feel...

A bit more?

That's enough?

Take as much as you... Oh, my word. Well done.

# Kiss me honey, honey, kiss me

# Thrill me, honey, honey, thrill me

# I don't care even if I blow my top, but honey, honey... #

Is that OK?

Happy?

# I'd like to play a little game with you

# A little game especially made for two... #

This is very romantic, isn't it?

Very romantic.

# Closer, closer now

# Kiss me honey, honey, kiss me

# Thrill me honey, honey, thrill me

# Don't care even if I blow my top... #

With my husband, that would be long enough now!

Hold still, now.

And we've got 90 seconds for you to do that,

it will seem like two hours.

# Just settle down and let me teach you how

# Closer, closer now... #

Keep going... Everybody all right

and feeling comfortable enough?

Yeah, thank you.

So you've just got 30 seconds to go...

..and you should feel it hardening up in your mouth, Matron.

So if you could sort of unlock your jaws, when you are ready,

and push it forward with your...

Fantastic, wahey, look at that.

Oh, isn't that lovely.

Oh, my word.

Brilliant. Well done.

Fantastic. Well done.

# Honey, honey, don't stop. #

Did I just see a kiss and think it was romantic?

No! Yes, it looked lovely.

But that's because they weren't eating each other's face off

and chewing each other's ears and tonguing all around the eyebrows.

That's the sort of kissing I don't like in public.

Yeah, let's tour.

Actually, I could do a bit of stand-up then you could get some snoggers.

-No, that was great, really good fun.

-Thank you.

-But still disgusting.

These casts might look like half chewed blancmanges but, somehow,

they make me want to go back and look at the finished sculptures again.

You know there's something rather touching about those couples

wanting to preserve their kissing moment.

They're very different to the schmaltzy representations of the kiss you usually see.

This actually is a kiss, in all its horror...and beauty.

# A prelude to

# A kiss. #

I'm beginning to think that, just maybe, there is something more

to all this kissing business than I'd thought.

I'm going to meet Adrianne Blue, who has written a whole book on kissing.

Will she be able to persuade me out of my kiss irritation?

Adrianne, right,

I want to talk to you particularly because I'm a big anti-kissing-in-public person.

-Snogging, like mega kind of snogging.

-Yes.

I don't particularly want to watch that in public

and I don't think there's a problem with going round the corner or going in a bit of darkness.

Look at the trees and the bridge instead of the young people.

You know. I don't think it IS a problem.

I don't want to look at the trees.

All right, heavy kissing in public I don't want to go on record

as the greatest advocate of it, I'm not,

but I do understand that people don't have a place to go,

or sometimes they're so in love, they can't keep their hands off each other, all right?

I'm willing to accept that, it doesn't bother me,

I look at the scenery if I don't want to look at them and I think you could too!

The actual kiss, the playing of tongues, the playing of lips,

the 34 muscles of the face moving in unison,

the bodies leaning together, and all of that, that's the dance.

-I must say you are making it sound rather attractive.

-Ah.

You have this mutual thing, both bodies doing the same things.

The lips of men are very similar to the lips of women, the mouths,

those things are androgynous.

So here's the only sexual act in which people are doing exactly the same thing.

That's magnificent. Now, what I don't understand is why it upsets you so much.

Is there something in your personal history,

is there some reason that this galls you?

'Oh, gawd, what am I supposed to say now?

'Gather, gather.'

Erm, there's no kind of very specific thing in my personal or history.

No, no - there's nothing.

I mean, since I've been doing the job that I do,

I have had drunk people kiss me, quite forcefully,

when I didn't want to kiss them.

Not with tongues, normally, but that has happened on a couple of occasions

and it's been very unpleasant because

I find it an infringement of my personal space.

If they're coming towards me, like a steam train, there's not a lot I can do about it.

I think the worst sort of kiss is a stolen kiss because the very nature,

the essence of kissing is this reciprocity, this mutuality.

Doing a dance together.

So if some bloke snogs you when you don't want them to,

as you've mentioned, that isn't really a kiss, that's aggression.

I really can't believe that you are against real kisses,

because kisses are delightful.

I'm the last person to tell people how to think or what to do,

everybody has to make their own relationship with kissing

and you're going to have to sort out yours, whenever you're ready to.

"Whenever I'm ready."

"Make my own relationship with the kiss."

What does Adrianne expect me to do, slurp the first bloke who walks past?

But maybe there was something in what she said.

Perhaps I have been unable to see the beauty in a kiss.

I wonder how my relationship with the kiss ended up here?

Perhaps I'll have to trace it right back to the beginning.

There's nothing else for it,

I'll have to go and see my mum and a load of babies.

# With my little legs I kick high high high

# With my little eyes I say peek-a-boo

# With my little lips I say, "I love you". #

Is this where all kissing begins, with mother and child?

I'm wondering how important these early kisses are

to how we feel about the kiss as adults?

A good thing I brought my mum then,

as well as being my mum,

she was a social worker in child protection for 30 years.

# And I like to fall in a heap - wheee! #

I think one of the lovely things about kissing babies,

and very small children, is the whole sense of how wonderful they are.

Their skin feels lovely.

Their skin is beautiful, the top of their head is lovely.

-They smell nice, as well.

-They smell very nice.

-On the whole.

-Yes.

-Yes.

It would be an experience which was mutually pleasurable, wouldn't it?

Absolutely.

Like not kissing your baby also means something really sad,

that you are not...

You're not really connected.

..not really connected.

I think that happens quite a lot,

either with mothers that are depressed or have been abused themselves,

or deprived in some way.

Did you kiss me a lot?

No, I wouldn't suggest I did.

A little, or a medium amount?

I'll tell you when I always kissed all of you,

is when you'd been hurt.

-Oh, right.

-If you were hurt and you cried.

It seems to me that kissing you

offered a very special statement about, "it'll be OK".

Which would have been devalued if you did it all the time.

She never kissed me. You never kissed me, did you?

Look what I turned into!

No, I don't want to give that impression.

But then, of course, we all grow up to have our first kisses, away from the family.

Where was your first kiss in public?

My first kiss, when I was like, six years old, was in school.

-I kissed this girl, Christina.

-Was she lovely?

She was a very beautiful girl.

Didn't know what I was doing, but then she showed me how to do it

and then after then...

-At six?

-Yeah.

-That's outrageous!

Can you remember your first kiss?

It was in the stock cupboard of my old school.

It was a few years ago. No, I can't remember. It was some time ago.

This guy called Alan, who was really ugly,

and had a nose out there that kept getting in the way.

-It was just at the Odeon cinema down the street.

-Oh, really?

-Yeah.

-And how did it go?

-It was...

I was a bit inexperienced, I actually forgot to come up for air.

It was in your Metro, outside your house, half two in the morning.

That sounds lovely, was it nice? Well, it obviously was nice enough... Yes.

It's ten years ago, so...

-Been married eight years.

-Ahh.

-And you still do kissing?

-Yeah.

-Yes. Oh, look...

-I went in then.

-Sorry!

-I know, ah. Was it nice, or was it a disappointment?

Oh, yes, it always is nice.

Well, I think so. I can't remember one that hasn't been nice.

That's a good average, isn't it?

Can we ask you about your first kiss?

-Yes, it was absolutely horrible.

-Oh, dear.

It was like being kissed by a big slimy, slug.

That first of many disastrous kisses,

and if I'm honest, a few good ones was when I was a teenager.

I wanted to ask my mum how she'd felt about that milestone.

My first kiss, which was absolutely revolting in every possible imaginable way,

I never told you about that,

-but you didn't want to hear about it, did you?

-No, you see,

I know there's this theme of mothers and daughters being good friends and the daughter...

You're not keen on that though, are you?

I'm not keen on that either, and I'm certainly...

Me neither. So that's really handy.

I mean, I think, you know,

you wouldn't be the first person I would naturally come galloping to and go,

-hey, guess what.

-No.

-First kiss.

I wouldn't have known about your first kiss, that's for sure.

-Absolutely.

-Just as well.

So, who was it then, Jo?

I can't even remember his name, but he was spotty and not very good at it.

I mean, I certainly wouldn't have wanted to discuss it with you, really.

I would have been embarrassed by it

because all those manifestations, of the personal and private,

I find embarrassing.

I don't... I'm not happy observing

a couple absolutely eating one another up somewhere in a public place.

So is THAT where I got my public kissing phobia from?

My mum! That could explain a lot.

# I kissed a girl

# I liked it

# The taste of her cherry Chapstick

# I kissed a girl just to try it

# Hope my girlfriend don't mind it. #

What's it like for today's teenagers graduating to their first kisses

while there's so much garish snogging going on already?

What might this next generation of kissers be like?

I'm going to find out.

Hi, do you want to be on our team?

-I'd love to, thank you very much.

-You can go first.

Oh, thanks,

Can I just say I'm not an asset.

Any old one I want? That'll do, then.

ALL CHEER

Now, I've gathered you all together today

because I want to find out what you lot, at your lovely tender,

but I'm not envious at all,

age, which is of the teenage persuasion.

What you all think about kissing?

Can you remember your first kiss?

Mmm.

He said, "Can I kiss you?" and I said, "OK".

So he kissed me on the forehead, for some reason.

-Ahh.

-And it was really embarrassing.

He just grabbed my face and shoved his tongue down my throat.

I was a bit like... Calm down!

Remembering back to when I was a teenager in 1841, erm...

I think the problem is that when you're your age,

you really worry that your experience is going to be different from everyone else's,

or you're going to do it wrong.

Before the first time you have a kiss,

you think there's a way you have to do it.

You practise it on your hand.

Yeah, and you get really scared,

but then once you've done it the first time, it's just after that,

it's like, "oh, that was it, what was I worried about?"

Let's talk about bad kisses. All right, let's talk about the worst kiss I've ever had.

If you make a weird noise, like, "slurp",

or a weird noise, like a licking noise, or...

It's a bit disgusting, but...

Oh, let's hear it then!

I just vomited.

Oh, that's what I was going to say!

While you were kissing someone?

No, no, no, just before.

Oh, just before.

And obviously then, we got into it, and I felt a bit come up.

Oh, no!

Where you really embarrassed?

Oh, no...

You weren't embarrassed. I love men, don't you?

Who would you most like to kiss in the world, if you could kiss anyone?

-Cheryl Cole.

-Justin Bieber.

-Aaron Johnson.

-Cheryl Cole.

-I say Aaron Johnson.

Oh, no, wait, Angelina Jolie.

Angelina Jolie is...

Scarlet Johannson.

-Both of you?

-BOTH: Yes.

Mark Wright from The Only Way Is Essex.

Harry Styles.

Oh, yeah! Just the whole of One Direction.

-He has really nice trousers.

-He has nice trousers?!

Jo, you haven't said who you would like to kiss most of all?

-Do I have to?

-ALL: Yes.

Prince Edward... No!

Who, male or female?

No, I'm not going to say.

You've got to say, we said it.

Don't worry, we won't laugh.

You will laugh.

-Are they really young or really old?

-No, I can't say anyone, no, no.

You have to! Tell us!

Well, those teenagers seemed fairly confident

in navigating their way through the minefield of kissing.

More than I was as a girl.

But that has set me thinking, who is the person

that I genuinely do want kiss?

Well, there's only one place to start.

Yeah, possibly.

No, maybe not.

Too much hair in the nasal area.

Done him.

And him.

Everyone's done him.

Oh, where's Clarkson when you need him?

No, he's only about five.

Hmm, I reckon he'll do, yep.

Let's see what HE'S up to.

Maybe I can engineer a chance encounter with my "mystery man".

'Ah, you want to know who it is, don't you?' Oi, keep off!

My image would never recover, thank you!

Before I can get close enough to pucker up to my mystery man,

I better brush up on my kissing technique.

Right, well, I'm on my way to a screen kissing lesson

at an acting workshop.

Thing about kissing in the films is it's always the first kiss.

I mean, what's wrong with that kiss eight years in,

where you crane your neck round from the washing up,

as he walks past with a tray of cat sick?

I mean, surely that's as good?

Well, it's all you're going to get anyway, isn't it?

OK, ladies and gentlemen, gather round, if you please.

It seems to me, this thorny issue of kissing,

particularly for camera, does rely on a certain degree of trust,

and a certain degree of awareness of your partner.

Do you remember playing tag? You tag someone and you can run away?

Well, there's another version of this,

do you remember this one that went by the name of kiss chase?

'Oh, no, he's going to make us do one of those warm-up games

'to lull us into a bit of actorly snogging.'

So, it's kiss chase, ladies and gentlemen. Standby, off you go.

Kiss chase! Go, go, go!

'Look at those thespians go, I think I'll go in the other direction.'

Jo's playing this, come on, Joe.

She's behind the piano, ladies and gentlemen.

Beautiful, keep going.

Keep going, Nick's on, Freddie, kiss someone.

'I haven't even kissed anyone yet, and they're all kissing me!'

There's three people on, Tom's on, Freddie's on.

Go, go, go! Beautiful.

Beautiful.

OK, enough, thank you.

So, let me ask you, folks, find yourself a partner,

not for life, of course, just for now.

And just go someplace in the room with your partner.

Ah... Am I going to get partnered with this guy?

Don't get me wrong, not the sort I had in mind to kiss,

I'm after a scruffy, pissed, old tramp type.

This calls for evasive action.

Can I just pop out a sec?

Sure, you go.

I need to subtly put the guy off somehow.

This should do it.

Ultimate weapon for discouraging any kind of kisser.

Mmm.

Yum.

And all this comes into play when you have intimate scenes.

'Oh, what a relief, that bloke's got partnered with someone else.

'So, who am I going to get, then?'

Someone partner up Jo - off you go.

What's your name?

-I'm John.

-Oh, hello.

-Nice to meet you.

He's bit more what I had in mind, but, bugger,

I've just eaten that garlic.

Just give me a sec.

-Sure.

-I'll be back in a sec.

What I wanted to do, folks, is quite easy,

you each have a script you've been sent.

That should do it.

I don't know whether this came through to you,

but it's a little bit of a script.

-No.

-It's an apartment, it's late at night, you look into John's eyes,

and you look into Jo's eyes,

and there's a contact straightaway.

Maybe it's a smile? I don't know.

So, of course, in the script I've just been given, we have to kiss.

Really up for this...

..I don't think.

Well, thanks for a lovely evening, it's been great.

I suppose I better get going.

Why?

Well, it's getting late, can I phone a cab?

Uh, yeah.

Jo, Jo, Jo!

That's not how the scene ends.

I know.

-It's, "can I phone a cab?" and the scene continues.

-OK.

I can't do this next bit.

What can't you do?

I can't go, come here, and give him a kiss.

I just feel really excruciatingly embarrassed.

And I don't want to do it.

Well, that's really nice for a scene,

if we can reverse it and I can be the one who's asking you to stay.

OK, all right. Well, thanks for a lovely evening, it was great,

but I suppose I better be going.

Why?

It's getting late, can I call a cab?

The phone's down.

I'll walk, then.

It's pouring down outside, you'll get soaked.

Got an umbrella?

No.

-A hat, then?

-No hat either.

Oh, I'll just get my coat.

You can stay if you like.

We wouldn't want you getting soaked outside, would we?

Uh, no, no, I suppose not.

-Come here.

-No!

LAUGHTER

what if we just do a kiss first, for now.

If you look into the eyes of this guy, just look into them.

Yes.

Without the crossed arms.

No!

Look at these people here, just have a look at here.

-Oh, for fuck's sake.

-Do you see them? Jo, Jo, stick with it.

Even though I've got a BAFTA, that was a fucking mistake.

No, no way, no. I just don't want to.

-I'm not forcing you to do it.

-I was going to have a crack at it

and up until that point it was fine,

and that was fine but that's as much as I'm prepared to do.

Give us a kiss, then, before you go.

Thank you.

The reason that I didn't end up snogging someone

is because after all my investigations about kissing,

I'm still the same person,

and I still don't like kissing people in front of a load of people

that I don't know.

I suppose the kiss is quite important,

but it's got to be someone that you want to kiss.

I do have someone in mind.

And to get ready for that "mystery man",

I think perhaps practising this fine art of kissing is best done in a room.

With a computer...

..alone.

You know, chaps, like checking your e-mail and, um, gaming,

if that's what you're doing up there.

Hi, friends, this tape, believe it or not,

is going to teach you how to French kiss.

Move your tongues around,

and a good thing to do is go around and around and around

in a rotating... Oh, aw!

That's better.

You know, I think I need a private lesson with that kissing guru, William Cane.

Let's see if I can get hold of him.

So, William, are you a terrific kisser?

Well, I've tried every kiss in the book,

including the violent one from the South Pacific,

the Trobriand Islands kiss which involves bloodshed.

They bite the lower lip so vigorously, they draw blood.

And they tear out tufts of hair,

and then finally they nibble off each other's eyelashes.

I'm going to try that on my husband tonight.

Now, you better be careful,

he may take out a restraining order!

Now, there's a particular mystery man that I'd really like to kiss,

and I know you'll be a bit disappointed it's not you,

but do you have any techniques you could recommend to me

to allow me to move in on him?

There are two techniques you could use.

The first technique is to simply tell him

that you are trying to perfect a certain type of kiss

that you have never experienced before.

Most men are intrigued by something new.

The second thing is to surprise the guy,

and just put your hands on his shoulders when you're very close

and just go for it very quickly, but that often can lead to reprisals.

Right, ha ha!

Jo, I just want to say, I sincerely wish you all the luck in the world

trying to get this kiss from that guy.

Just remember, to think positive throughout the whole thing,

and you will come out a winner.

So, with William's positive attitude pep talk ringing in my ears,

I think I'm ready to get hold of my mystery man,

the one I most want to kiss.

That's him, my mystery man.

I must think positive. I want to be a kissing winner!

Oh, no, where's he going?

Oi!

Oi!

Turn around so I can see your lips.

Shit, he's coming back this way.

Oh!

OK, this is it, I'm going in.

Hey, hold up!

Blimey, can I really be arsed?

I'll bloody kill the director if he uses the Benny Hill music on this.

Wait!

Hold on a minute,

look, we've just got something really beautiful to do together.

-I've been practising on my hand, it'll be great, just stop.

-Ow!

Right, mate, seeing as I've gone to all this effort, we might as well.

But, do you know what, dear viewer?

just as I was about to get my tasty bite,

I went and lost my appetite.

Maybe the kiss isn't so devalued after all,

just perhaps the case is a uniquely personal and beautiful way

to communicate all that's really important to another person.

For this short time you're both on earth.

The kiss is fine, I've decided, if used wisely, and bloody sparingly.

And in private.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd