BROMSGROVE and Droitwich Spa sweethearts are being urged to pucker up and celebrate National Kissing Day this Saturday, writes Sarah Chambers.

To mark the annual event we asked a number of well-known community figures about their first kiss. Whether it was a peck on the cheek or a passionate embrace, the Advertiser/Messenger wanted to know.

Our first victim was Bromsgrove District Council's Labour leader, councillor Peter McDonald (Uffdown and Waseley).

"My first kiss was when I was five or six in the school playground. I was very young and innocent but never that young or innocent to have kissed a Tory," he said.

Well-known town fundraiser Nicole Harris hails from the land of romance itself - France.

The Stoke Heath resident organises the town's annual bikeathon, fun run and junior bikeathon in aid of the Leukaemia Research charity.

She is also a teacher at the Mount School, in Birmingham Road, Bromsgrove.

Nicole was a little shy about her first romantic encounter. But she did comment on the popularity of kissing in her homeland where it is customary to greet people with between two and four kisses - depending on the region.

"Each area has its own kissing etiquette and it's very normal to kiss as part of a greeting," she said.

Bromsgrove Rovers' co-manager Gary Hackett was a young romantic and his first snog was at the tender age of three.

"The girl was called Suzanne and she attended my pre-school. I think she came from Halesowen but I haven't seen her since we were children and I'm now happily married with two children."

Bromsgrove scriptwriter and novelist Veronica Henry is used to setting the page alight with tales of passion, jealously and romance - particularly in her latest novel Honeycote - A Tale of Romp and Circumstance.

Veronica, a married mum of two, remembers her first embrace.

"It was at the fifteenth birthday party of a now famous National Hunt jockey. His French penfriend had come to stay and after a few glasses of cider we went into the garden ... Showaddywaddy was playing Under the Moon of Love, and he'd been eating After Eight mints - delicious! I never saw him again."

Former Droitwich Spa mayor, town councillor Don Lawley said: "It must have been when I was about seven or eight. As an evacuee I met this girl from London who I fell madly in love with, I think she was the first person I kissed."

Pam Davey, the leader of Droitwich Spa Town Council, said: "My first kiss was when I was about 12 on a holiday to Weymouth. I met this boy who I really liked.

"He wrote me a lovely love letter but instead of putting an arrow through the heart he drew a dagger!"

National Kissing Day has been running for seven years and is organised by Denplan, which helps people budget for trips to the dentist.

The yearly event aims to promote oral hygiene.