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Available for over a year

Actors faced with – BEAT – THEY KISS lest kissing lead to awkwardness, cold sores, flu, or simply bed will opt to kiss themselves instead; and thus the radio-drama snog is how you tell just how a man precisely feels about his hand. For men, alas, will often hog this bit with darling, would you mind? Or come ‘ere you … or I beseech – and in the well-timed plonker find a way to silence her, mid-speech. They broach the pop-shield with the back of their left paw, and plant a smack with lots of extra wet and suction to be dialled down in post-production. Yet harken to the glowing tank! What is that sound? The crunch of locks? A horse with an apple? That final yank before the toilet sink unblocks? Oh dear. Real kisses, we efface. We lock our mouths down tight, like rubber seals on docking ports in space where nobody can hear you slobber. Now pucker up. Can you resist a cheeky dorsal level-test? Ha ha loser but wasn’t that a touch heartbreaking in its sad squeaky isolation? Imagine the compounded shame of doing something quite so lame before a whole attentive nation. Now play that little squelch again on the old-style tape-delay your brain keeps around for such short measures as it would replay at its leisure; and as the quality degrades and your auto-embrasse gently fades into the Atlantic churn to which all smackers must return – ask yourself: what clever foley could honour, say, that secret santa who blew your mind below the holly? A ring pulled on a can of Fanta? Would you brick a ripened peach for that white hour in late December you made out on the stony beach? The sound’s the last thing you remember. So thesps: when scripts call for a kiss just say your line, and pause, like this: and trust the thrill of the dead air; and us to know what goes in there.