'World's first interracial TV kiss' discovered in BFI archive

The world's first known interracial kiss on TV has been discovered from an ITV drama, some six years before Captain Kirk's famous smooch with Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek.

The sci-fi show has long been credited with showing the one of the first interracial kisses on an episode in 1968, after Emergency Ward 10 in 1964.

But researchers at the British Film Institute (BFI) have found an even earlier example - a kiss between actors Lloyd Reckord and Elizabeth MacLennan in You in Your Small Corner, a TV play which aired in 1962 - 53 years ago.

It was rediscovered as part of research ahead of a discussion event called Race and Romance in Television, and will be shown in full at a special screening next month - the first time it will appear on screen since its initial showing.

The play follows a young man as he arrives in Brixton, London, from Jamaica, before heading to Cambridge to study at university.

There, he meets a young woman on the rebound and they become lovers.

The TV play, produced by Granada, was an adaptation of a stage show by Lloyd Reckord's brother Barry, which had originally been staged at the Royal Court.

Heather Stewart, BFI creative director, said it would have been "ground-breaking" for the time.

You in Your Small Corner will screen at the BFI Southbank on December 13.