My first kiss was nothing to shout about

9:28am Tuesday 13th May 2008

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Why do people make such a fuss about their first kiss?

It is such a momentous event, assuming the role of a legend among kisses, the memory of which stays fresh until we're old and grey.

Look at the fuss being made over Simon Cowell's first kiss, after he was telephoned on a live American TV show by the girl he shared it with.

She's been splashed across virtually every newspaper - for what? If they'd been having a rampant affair I could understand it. But a little peck at the bottom of the garden when they were less than ten years old?

Most people are children when they have their first kiss, as Simon Cowell was, so why is it such a big deal?

There must be loads of people who can lay claim to having been the object of a celebrity's first smacker. Maybe the Simon Cowell episode will pave the way for "first-kiss-and-tell" stories in the News of the World.

My first kiss - and I'm not fibbing when I say I had trouble remembering - was with a boy called Michael Twizel (really). We were at a place called The Swings, a spot beside the local beck where children hung out and made dams.

I must have been about nine or ten, and one afternoon, while thinking up ways to relieve the dam-making tedium, Michael gave me a kiss. It was very short and sweet - although I seem to remember he tried to make it last longer - and involved the pressing together of tightly-closed lips.

They were closed on my part anyway. I can't remember what he was doing as I tried to blot it out the second it happened.

It's not a happy memory. I know I didn't like it, even more so when another member of our gang asked if he could do the same. I remember scurrying away, embarrassed, while another girl obliged, before we tired of kissing and went back to our dams.

I don't know where Michael is now, but even if he became famous I don't think I could cash in. While it was my first kiss, I know for a fact that it wasn't his. Even at that age, Michael was a bit of a lad. He had a brother in his mid-teens who was something of a babe magnet, so he was well-versed in the birds and the bees.

I didn't tell my parents about the kiss and wonder whether my own daughter will tell me when it happens to her.

My friend's son recently confessed to having had his first kiss, but I believe the thrill was more on his part than hers. He was one of a long line of suitors to a girl who, despite not having reached her teens, appears to have had more boyfriends than I've had Magnum double caramel ice creams (and I've had plenty of those, believe me).

I'd rather forget about my first kiss. I certainly wouldn't want to broadcast the details beyond the safe confines of The Press (I'm chancing my arm that Michael doesn't live in York). If Michael or I found fame, I'd keep quiet. After all, I know what he'd say: "She was terrible. The worst kisser ever."