the 9pm watershed and it was edited down from 2 seconds to half a second because it was felt there would be viewers who would not be expecting to see that "kind of material at that time" and the BBC did not want to "startle" viewers. Nevertheless, the broadcast of the gay kiss evoked numerous complaints from viewers to the BBC. A BBC spokesperson said, "It's true to say it has caused considerable reaction." Lynford has opined that the decision to cut the kissing scene by a second or two broke its rhythm, and he suggested that the producers of the soap opera were disappointed that the BBC bosses ordered the scene to be cut. He has commented, "The producers on the show at the time were disappointed the powers-that-were took the decision to cut the kiss down. At the time we felt it was shying away from the journey the two characters were taking." However, Lynford has said that in hindsight, it made little difference to the scene's impact, which he described as "astounding". He added, "Government ministers and even the Church of England took to commenting on that episode and its content." Author Margaret Llewellyn-Jones has suggested that Simon and Tony were two of the "straight-est-looking gay boys in London". She suggested that they were not convincing to the gay audience, which she argued was because "the gayness of the characters was 'clawed-back' and that the readers of the image who see them as unconvincing use a queer reading practice. The two gay characters are signified within codes of recognition that are available to the central reader. To the queer reader they can be seen clearly as a rather dubious construction - they are a carbon copy of a 'straight' relationship where only the object of desire is different, rather than a relationship that signs itself as different. To a queer reader the gay relationship in this instance says nothing to them other than a representation of a straight relationship, what it does show is the implicit constructedness of all of the relationships present in a soap's fabric." According to Lynford, Simon was branded "dull and boring and not fun and up beat like all gay men" by the British press. Lynford has suggested that Simon and Tony's love storyline was compared unfavourably to the more sensational depiction of gay men in Channel 4's Queer as Folk. Lynford