SEAN CONNERY IN TV’S FIRST GAY KISS

Researchers have uncovered the first kiss between two men ever shown on television and it featured macho James Bond actor Sean Connery.

The British Film Institute found footage of the kiss between the then 29-year-old Connery and fellow actor Richard Pasco in a 1960 BBC production of the Jean Anouilh play Colombe.

The kiss, was however not between lovers.

The two actors played brothers; one of which believes his wife is having an affair with his sibling and wants to find out what she sees in him by kissing him.

At the time of the kiss, homosexuality was still illegal in the UK.

“…it might have been accepted because of the context and because it was a television version of a classic play by a great French dramatist,” said Dick Fiddy, TV consultant at the British Film Institute.

“It was, we are pretty sure, the first male-to-male kiss on TV,” he added.

It would be another 27 years before the BBC showed another kiss between men, in the soap EastEnders.

The BBC production of Colombe was believed to have been lost but researchers recently found a copy in the US and was returned to the UK.

It was screened by the British Film Institute in London last week.