For a moment it looked like the British national media had finally become nipple-free after more than 40 years. For the first three days of last week The Sun’s Page 3 girl, normally topless, was actually wearing clothes, prompting insiders and other newspapers to speculate that a decision had finally been made to drop the much-criticised daily dose of titillation.
The “No More Page 3” public campaign rejoiced at the news. It seemed the newspaper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, had finally seen the light. It was Mr Murdoch who introduced the Page 3 girls in 1970 in a bid to boost circulation — a move which certainly succeeded.
A bit like naughty seaside postcards, the Page 3 girls had become a sort of institution in Britain, if something of an anachronism in these times. Even Mr Murdoch admitted last year that the cheesecake pictures looked a bit “old-fashioned”, hinting it might be time for them to fade into the sunset. So after three “nipple-less” editions, it looked like he had thrown in the towel. Or had he?
The resurrection
Amidst all the speculation, The Sun initially would not confirm any changes. When asked about the future of Page 3, a spokesman said helpfully: “Page 3 will remain in the same place it’s always been — between Page 2 and Page 4.”
Then on Thursday we got the answer. In a Page 1 panel, the paper announced: “We’ve had a mammary lapse” and on Page 3, under a “clarifications and corrections” headline there she was in all her glory, 22-year-old Nicole from Bournemouth, winking at the readers, minus her bikini top.
The Times summed up the situation most succinctly with the headline “Storm in a D-cup”.
Foxy lady
When I left England in 1969, The Sun was a really boring broadsheet and struggling for readers.
Shortly afterwards, Mr Murdoch bought the paper, transformed it into a brash tabloid and made a small fortune. Page 3 went from strength to strength, or rather, bosom to bosom.
Some of the models became household names, most notably Samantha Fox who in a readers’ poll was voted the most popular Page 3 girl ever. She even had a No 1 hit song, Touch Me (I Want Your Body), which was not about visiting the undertakers.
Being banned by many public libraries for “lewdness” only served to boost The Sun’s popularity. The very mention of “Page 3”, even in a conversation in Thailand, and everyone knew what you were talking about.
In the early 1970s, an occasional copy of The Sun would show up on the Bangkok Post news desk. I recall Thai colleagues reacting in disbelief when I told them it was Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper, with a circulation of more than three million at the time. The strange thing is, very few people in Britain actually admitted to reading it.
Hamster sandwich
Whatever you thought of The Sun, it was rarely boring, even though some of its news items might make you wince. One celebrated front page story in 1986 was headlined “Freddie Starr ate my hamster”. According to a lady acquaintance, Starr, a comedian, arrived home hungry one night and not being able to find any food, grabbed her pet hamster called Supersonic from its cage, after which he “put it between two slices of bread and started eating it”.
For those concerned about the fate of the wretched hamster, the story turned out to be a complete fabrication. But much to Starr’s annoyance the headline stuck and he admitted years later, “I’m fed up with people shouting out ‘Did you eat that hamster Freddie?' ”
Language of its own
It wasn’t just the saucy pictures. The Sun and other tabloids like the Daily Mirror and Daily Star introduced a whole new newspaper vocabulary in the 1970s, as recorded in Fritz Spiegl’s excellent book, Keep Taking The Tabloids!
To call someone a woman was not enough for the tabloids. It had to be a “vivacious blonde” or a “sultry brunette”. If she was deemed “shapely” it meant she had big boobs. Anyone over 60 was labelled a “pensioner”.
Celebrities caught philandering usually had been involved in a spot of “hanky-panky” and had a secret “love-nest” for their “trysts” which sometimes resulted in a “love-child”. Unmarried teenage mothers became “gymslip mums”. Any misbehaving man was a “fiend”.
People who found themselves in a spot of bother were usually “ashen-faced” while officials who came under public scrutiny remained “tight-lipped".
Bare facts
The word “naked” was frowned upon in the tabloids, being replaced by “nude” which sounded much naughtier. Such stories prompted headlines invariably featuring “bare facts" or a “cover-up”.
In Britain of course you can’t escape the weather. So in the summer, tabloid readers were treated to “Phew what a scorcher!” while in the winter there was the inevitable “It’s snow joke”.
Mind you, I do recall in the early 1970s, here in Thailand, the Bangkok World once carried the headline “Brr!” when the temperature had the nerve to dip below 18C in the capital.
Curry and cats
Tabloid journalism still lives on, as witnessed by this tremendous opening sentence from a Daily Mail story a couple of years ago: “A gay man tried to poison his lesbian neighbours by putting slug pellets into their curry after he was accused of kidnapping their three-legged cat.”
The mind boggles.
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