For some reason the good people of Worthing have always been easily shocked.

Until recently councillors still held meetings to decide what films people could watch in the cinemas.

Over the decades they have been offended by men and women bathing together, topless sun-worshippers and even windsurfers getting changed on the promenade.

But these affronts to public decency pale into insignificance compared with the "Bed and Bawd" row which erupted when a couple of actors decided to strip off on stage.

In April 1970, the Connaught Theatre in Union Place unveiled plans to stage Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

The town's blue rinse brigade was apoplectic when it learned the stars, Michael MacKenzie and 20-year-old Susan Penhaligon, would be naked in bed for the total of 90 seconds during the two-and-a-half hour performance.

Eight hundred protesters signed a petition branding the play obscene and there were calls for the council to withdraw its annual £24,000 subsidy to the theatre.

Campaigner Mrs Harold Dandridge urged the women of Worthing to unite in a bid to get the offending scene dropped.

She feared the young people of the town would be corrupted by the "destruction" of one of Shakespeare's most beautiful plays.

The parishioners of St George's Church, East Worthing, demanded the withdrawal of the scene, branding it an "affront to Christian standards".

Councillor A E Dunning urged people to pray for the producer, Robert English.

Another objector said: "If we don't draw the line somewhere there is no limit to sheer disgustingness."

Mr English launched a staunch defence of the nudity, saying it wasn't a publicity gimmick and was in the play's least important scene.

But he was eventually forced to compromise. Romeo and Juliet would appear in the nude during the Monday to Friday evening performances but during matinees and Saturday night's show, Juliet would wear a nightdress and Romeo a shirt and tights.

Six supporters raised the temperature even further by threatening to jump on stage and strip if anybody complained on the first night.

The controversial scene came early in the second act amid fears that protesters had infiltrated the audience and were planning to respond with slow handclaps, tomato throwing and water pistol squirting.

But the mayhem didn't materialise and, at the final curtain, the cast received loud cheers and several minutes' applause.

Penhaligon said she was thrilled by the response, while MacKenzie said: "Those who accused us of obscenity and pornography must have very red faces now they have seen that it was all a fuss about nothing."

Alderman Frank Kenton, chairman of the theatre's board of governors, described the scene as beautiful, artistic and certainly not pornographic.

One elderly member of the audience was heard to complain on her way out: "You couldn't see anything."

Eight years later, there was another "explicit" nude scene on stage at the Connaught during the play Equus and it hardly caused a whimper of protest.

How times change.