The kissing marathon went on for hours, but budding star Georgia Groome was unfazed.

“You have to pretend you’re enjoying it, because the kissing has to look real,” the 15-year-old told me as we sheltered from the rain sweeping through Eastbourne.

Girl gang: Georgia Groome (second left) and friends in the film

But she was quick to assure me that the romantic scene she filmed over and over – and over – with actor Aaron Johnson, 17 (who plays Robbie, a sort of teenage sex god), was purely acting.

Director: Gurinder Chadha

Georgia plays, well, actually a character also called Georgia, in Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha’s big-screen version of Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging. The film is based on Louise Rennison’s popular novels about a schoolgirl who lives with her parents on the South Coast and hangs out with her three girlfriends, known as the Ace Gang.

“I was acting, and so was Aaron,” she laughed, although she did confess she has some things in common with the screen Georgia.

“I did once shave my eyebrows like her,” admitted Georgia, who was in the hard-boiled film thriller London To Brighton before Angus.

Mr Johnson’s fellow teen actors on the movie, Sean Bourke and Tommy Bastow, with nothing much to do on a rainy day, jokingly planted the suggestion that the snogging between Georgia and Aaron might have been more than acting.

By the time I’d asked around a bit, I realised the lads were winding me up.

In any case, Sean, who plays Robbie’s brother Tom, admitted that it’s not quite the nirvana he thought it might be having all these teenage girls on set.

“I have to remember that I’m 18 and they’re 15 and when I do my snogging scenes (with Eleanor Tomlinson, who plays Georgia’s friend Jas) her mum’s always on set watching – and so is Gurinder – so it’s hands-behind-my-back time,” said Sean who, in any case, has a girlfriend of two years.

Gurinder guffaws when we chat about her youthful wannabe Lotharios. She jokes that one of the boys was absolutely shaking during his romantic scene.

“I said to him: ‘Just kiss her on the lips! Don’t go for the ear, go for the lips!’”

Initially, Gurinder and husband Paul Berga were just going to write the screenplay of Rennison’s book and move on.

For one thing, Gurinder was pregnant with twins (who were born in June), but she and Paul were so happy with the script that they decided they wanted to continue working on the film.

“I was able to go back to my schooldays and write about what it was like to be a teenager, but I was adamant that because everything about Louse Rennison’s books is so English, it would remain so.

“If we do anything that looks American, I won’t shoot it,” Gurinder said defiantly.

The rain in Eastbourne was certainly un-American.

By BAZ BAMIGBOYE, Daily Mail