A taste of honey

The story of Jo, an English schoolgirl, played by Rita Tushingham, who is excluded from her mother's life and forced, perhaps prematurely, into finding a life of her own. She has an affair with a young black sailor who leaves her pregnant; plays "mother" to a homosexual and, in the end, is reconciled to her mother.

Jo (played by Rita Tushingham) is a 17-year-old Salford schoolgirl with a difficult alcoholic mother, Helen (Dora Bryan) Relations between Jo and her mother become strained when her mother meets and marries a new man, Peter Smith. Jo starts a job in a shoe shop and rents a flat on her own. She meets a gay textile design student, Geoffrey Ingham (Murray Melvin) and invites him to move in with her. When Jo discovers she is pregnant by Jimmy, Geoff is supportive of her, even offering to marry her.