Not, The Courier suggests, the most auspicious start for someone whose job it is to vet films for scenes of sex and violence.

"I'm fine with it now," Fussell responded cheerfully.

"In fact, there was a wrist slashing in the film I was watching this morning and no problem."

Fussell, a former cinema manager, works for the BBFC, the British Board of Film Classification. Previously known as the British Board of Film Censors, these days the BBFC prefers to avoid the more emotive "censor" and titles Fussell and her colleagues examiners. However, the old terminology has not entirely died away.

"When you're in the pub trying to explain what you do, you pretty much have to say 'I'm a film censor,'" Fussell acknowledged.

Fussell will be in Inverness next week to give an insight into the enclosed world of film classification - and give Highland film enthusiasts a chance to do some censorship of their own.

"I get the audience to use their knowledge and try and classify something themselves," Fussell said.

"It's amazing the reactions you get. Sometime you feel that young people are quite lenient and older people are more censorious, but when I showed people a clip from 'Team America: World Police' where the puppets have sex, the younger people wanted to give it quite a high rating but the older people were fine about it: 'Oh, it's just puppets.'"

Fussell, who has been an examiner for five-and-a-half years, held a similar masterclass in Falkirk recently where her audience ranged from students on the local college's film and media course to pensioners in their 70s, but all with an interest in film.

Quite often these related to recent decisions make by the BBFC and one of Fussell's own decisions, to classify newly released horror-thriller "Orphan" as a 15-certificate film, has been challenged.

"Somebody thought it was a bit too scary for a 15 and wanted it to be an 18," she explained.

Most years see the BBFC embroiled in some controversy over its decisions, most recently Cannes prize-winner "Antichrist" from Danish director Lars Von Trier has been attacked for explicit sex and violence and faced calls for local authorities to ban the film after it was passed uncut by the BBFC.

The film will be shown later this month at Eden Court, which is warning its customers that it "contains strong real sex scenes, bloody violence and self-mutilation. Not for the faint-hearted."

Defending the BBFC's decision to pass the film, Fussell suggested much of the controversy had been generated by people who had not actually seen the film.

A scene from the horror/thriller 'Orphan'.

"A lot of the controversy about 'Antichrist' is based on a scene of explicit sex. There's also a close up shot of genital mutilation, but that's obviously not real, just gore and special effects," Fussell said.

"There's nothing in it that would be harmful and that's primarily what we are looking at. When we watched it we never had any doubt that it would be an 18 uncut. That's the way we operate these days: an adult should be able to see what they want as long as it is not harmful."

Though most licensing authorities will conform to classifications from the BBFC, which is an industry funded private body, local councils still have the final say on whether a film can be shown and under what certification.

Fussell was interested to learn that Martin Scorsese's controversial 1988 film "The Last Temptation of Christ" was banned by Inverness District Council, but pointed out that sometimes local authorities view BBFC decisions as too harsh rather than too lenient with some councils downgrading the Shane Meadows drama about a group of 1980s skinheads, "This is England", from an 18 to a 15.

Though more lenient than in the days of the 1980s "video nasty" controversy which saw films which had been previously available refused BBFC certification and withdrawn from sale, Fussell added that the BBFC now took a tougher line on certain issues.

"There are areas where we are stricter, such as smoking, drugs, knives and racist language. Some things go in one direction, some in the other," she said.

The 23 examiners, who on screening days watch almost six hours of material, no longer cover just cinema releases, but also DVDs and video games, with titles chosen at random, so an examiner could be asked to give a view on anything from a children's cartoon to pornography.

"Watching porn at first is pretty weird, then you get used to it. You end up watching it with your legs on the desk or your lunch in front of you. People find that odd, but it just becomes pretty mundane. It's amazing how you get used to muck," Fussell said.

"Having said that, you can still get shocked by explicit bits of porn or violence. If there's something really horrible, you can abort the viewing and send it back to the film-maker to make cuts."

With six hour screening sessions every 10 days, surely the last way Fussell wants to spend her time off is watching a film?

"No! I go to the pictures all the time," she laughed.

"I even go to see films I've examined. When you're watching something with a notebook on your knee and writing down every swear word, it can be hard to concentrate on the story."

* Emily Fussell's BBFC masterclass takes place in Eden Court's La Scala cinema on Tuesday 25th August at 6.30pm. Note: This event is suitable for aged 15 and over, but some clips from 18 certificate films may be shown.

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