Perth man Scott Jones comforts his girlfriend during the Vancouver riots

The young lovers were identified today as Perth man Scott Jones and his Canadian girlfriend Alexandra Thomas.

In their first interview, the couple said they are ‘totally stunned’ by how their intimate embrace has been seen across the globe.

When I first saw it, I thought, “No way, that’s not… I can’t believe that’s us”,’ said Miss Thomas.

‘Then I looked some more and realised, that is us. That’s a very revealing picture of us.’

Miss Thomas and her boyfriend had been watching the game at a downtown bar when the rioting broke out and they became surrounded police.

As violence broke out around them, the couple were photographed as they tenderly kissed amongst the chaos.

‘I was trying to understand what was going on. The photo was definitely not something we expected to happen,’ Miss Thomas told the Toronto Star.

Mr Jones said that he kissed his girlfriend as he tried to calm her after they were run over by riot police.

‘The riot police ran on top of us,’ said Mr Jones. ‘They ran us over.

‘We were knocked over, and I was just trying to calm her down, because as I'm sure you can imagine, she was somewhat distraught,’ he told ABC News.

As the couple spoke for the first time, new video emerged of the moments before the infamous kiss.

The footage, shot from a rooftop, shows police in riot gear next to the couple before they embrace.

The couple met shortly after Mr Jones, 29, arrived in Canada six months ago. He has been working as a bar tender, while he tries to make it as a stand-up comedian.

Miss Thomas is a recent graduate from the University of Guelph in Ontario.

Mr Jones’ father Brett today said that the couple were ‘totally overwhelmed’ by all the coverage they had received.

'They are both just totally stunned by it, actually,' he said.

Scott's mother saw the photo on the internet, but did not realise it was her son until her daughter pointed him out.

'She just said, "Mom, you do realize that is Scott." And I said, "Oh, I better go back and have another look at it." And sure enough, that was my boy,’ Megan Jones said.

‘I just thought, yep, that would be Scott because he’s a bit of a dreamer and he wouldn’t have even known there was a riot going on around him, quite possibly,’ she told the Globe and Mail.

The global interest in the photo has overwhelmed the couple according to Scott’s mother.

‘He sort of said, “Oh, sweet, they’ve got a photo”,’ Mrs Jones said. ‘But now that it’s become bigger than Ben-Hur, well, I don’t quite know what he’s going to make of it.’

Scott Jones has been in Canada on a 12-month work visa. The young lovers had been due to start a travelling around California next week, but are now heading to New York for television interviews.

They are planning to move to Melbourne, Australia, later in the summer.