Normal People has become a huge hit, not just for its beautiful love story but for its explicit sex scenes.

Now a member of the crew who worked on the BBC show’s saucy shots has revealed the secrets to making them work.

The series, which is based on Sally Rooney’s best-selling novel, follows the enduring relationship between Marianne Sheridan and Connell Waldron through school and young adulthood.

Ita O’Brien worked as an intimacy co-ordinator on set and it was her job to make sure the actors felt as comfortable as possible while shooting sex scenes.

She said the programme’s stars Daisy Edgar-Jones, 21, (who plays Marianne) and Paul Mescal, 24, (Connell) were coached while acting out the intimate moments their characters shared.

She told RTE’s Brendan O’Connor Show: “Before the role of the intimacy co-ordinator there wasn’t the sense that actually we need to bring a skill and choreography to the intimate content, and there wasn’t a sense that we had to do a risk assessment.

“Actors were left to their own devices.

“Directors might have spoken really clearly about what they wanted from the intimate content, but there wasn’t that stage of making sure everywhere the actors were going to be touched or the sexual content they might be doing – or the degree of nudity.

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