Coronation Street boss Kate Oates hits back at Kate Garraway’s suggestion that gay men kissing is ‘shocking television’

Kate Oates has hit back at Kate Garraway over suggestions that gay men kissing could be considered shocking television.

Garraway made the comments in an awkward interview on Good Morning Britain, when she listed EastEnders’ first gay kiss as an example a ‘shocking’ storyline.

She asked: "I suppose what parents might worry about is it feels like [Corrie] is getting more and more shocking. I remember – because I am very old – the first lesbian kiss on Brookside and the first gay man kiss on EastEnders.

"Now in tonight's episode of Coronation Street we're going to see the character David Platt drugged and sexually assaulted in a gay sexual assault.

"That feels like an exponential increase in the explicit nature of what's going straight into family viewing living rooms. It will be very clear, won't it, what's going on for youngsters watching?"

Oates told her: “First of all you used gay kisses as an example of shocking television and I think it’s really really important that nobody thinks a gay kiss is shocking television.”

But Garraway interrupted: “Well it was shocking at the time.”

Oates responded: “Exactly and that’s what’s interesting. It was at the time and quite rightly because to think that a gay kiss is shocking television is really really disturbing.

And it’s things like soap operas that can make these things… you know this is life this is how people should be free to live and that’s great.”

Oates was on the show to discuss Corrie’s current male rape storyline which is the latest in a series of hard-hitting storylines for the soap.

The show’s boss has accepted that she has made the ‘series’ darker, but also took the opportunity to reassure fans that tricky subject matter would always be handled with ‘consideration’, and that the drama would never lose its ‘comedy’.

"We know what our viewers like and what they don't like. We're not losing the laughs in Corrie. I think if we lost the comedy in Corrie, I would be dragged out!"

Coronation Street continues Friday, March 16 at 7.30pm on ITV.