ALMOST a decade after British soap's first lesbian kiss in Brookside, same sex snogging still has the ability to shock. On Monday, Todd Grimshaw and Karl Foster make Coronation Street history by locking lips in Manchester's gay district, Canal Street, in the culmination of a storyline that has been developing for months.

It's not the first, and won't be the last, gay kiss in soap history but has enough novelty value to be labelled controversial. Even a radio gay kiss, which was heard but not seen, on Radio 4's The Archers caused a fuss the other month.

There have been the same cries of "filth" from rent-a-quote spokespersons in the tabloids. Newspapers, of course, illustrate these stories with pictures of the dirty deed.

The actors performing the kiss protest that, in real life, they're straight and relate their apprehension at filming the kiss. They point out they were only acting and how they agreed no tongues before shooting the clinch.

"Filming the kiss was a bit nerve-racking - just the way it is filming anything you haven't done before. But it was all a worry about nothing really," says actor Bruno Langley, who plays "is he, isn't he?" Todd.

Co-star Chris Finch took a different approach, commenting that kissing stubble-faced Bruno was like kissing a Brillo pad.

That the gay kiss is happening in the country's top-rating soap Coronation Street makes it all the more newsworthy. After nearly 44 years, the love that dare not speak its name is headline news in Weatherfield. The cobbled streets have never seen anything like it. Ena Sharples would have got her hairnet, let alone her bloomers, in a twist if she'd still be around.

TV has featured gay kissing - and a lot more - in series such as Queer As Folk and Tipping the Velvet, but they were dramas after the watershed, not primetime soaps.

The Street has taken two bites of the cherry, so to speak, with Todd's sexuality. The poor lad has been confused for some time. So baffled that he moved in with schoolgirl mum Sarah and got her pregnant. Now it's Karl's turn (for a kiss, not to get pregnant, although that would be a soap first).

Last year we were treated to Todd puckering up to Sarah's brother Nick while he sleeping. He got no further than brushing his lips on Nick's cheek before being sternly rebuffed. The incident and its aftermath gained the Street valuable publicity and prepared shockable viewers for the full frontal lip contact to follow at Easter.

Street producers know how touchy viewers can be about gay kissing. That didn't stop 3.9m viewers, or 16 per cent of the TV audience, switching to Channel 4 one night in January 1995 to see Beth Jordache kiss Margaret Clemence in Brookside.

"The kiss took a previously forbidden sexual culture to primetime," said one TV executive. All the same, a lesbian kiss was considered too daring to be repeated in the early evening omnibus edition.

EastEnders ran into trouble a decade ago with gay couple Della and Binnie. They snogged in the middle of Bridge Street and were packed off to Ibiza, never to be seen again. Presumably, they wanted to avoid the lynch mob of Walford citizens outraged by their behaviour.

Albert Square's first gay couple were graphic designer Colin Russell (played by Michael Cashman, now an MEP) and younger cockney barrow boy Barry. Back in the 1980s, they gave EastEnders viewers the sight of their first gay screen kiss. But a decade later, BBC bosses denied us the climactic moment of Tony Hills kissing gay Simon on the pier at Brighton. The moment of contact was cut from the episode because it was screened before 8pm.

Tony was so upset he slept with Simon's sister Tiffany and worried that he'd got her pregnant. He was merely obeying a rule of soap that men are not allowed to be exclusively or happily gay.

While EastEnders has embraced a certain amount of gayness and the Street has pretended it simply didn't exist, Emmerdale has been quietly letting lesbian Zoe work her way through the female population of the Yorkshire village, with occasional forays to the hotspots of nearby Leeds to find female company.

She's had a long list of girlfriends, including Frankie the lorry driver and even a marriage blessing with Emma. She also snogged her brother's wife, Charity.

Zoe must be aware that being a lesbian is safer bet than being heterosexual in Emmerdale. Sarah embarked on a torrid affair with lodger toyboy Richie and paid the price. Their roll in the hay had tragic consequences when Sarah died after someone set fire to the barn.

At least Todd and Karl had an appreciative audience for their snog as Manchester's gay population turned out in Canal Street to cheer them on. It seems not all viewers will be doing the same.