Today has seen The Sun return a topless woman to its famous Page Three, whilst also mocking media outlets that had claimed the long-running feature had been dropped from the publication.

Nicola McLean has appeared on Page Three

Nicola McLean has appeared on Page Three

On Tuesday, The Sun's sister paper The Times had said that the tabloid newspaper was no longer going to feature Page Three girls, but the latest edition has seen one feature.

Widely reported, the end of Page Three wasn't commented on at all by The Sun until today.

Apologising on behalf of all those who ran the story, The Sun announces the return of the topless model on the front page with a trail reading: "We've had a mammary lapse."

The image of the topless woman inside includes the caption: "Further to recent reports in all other media outlets, we would like to clarify that this is Page 3 and this is a picture of Nicole, 22, from Bournemouth.

"We would like to apologise on behalf of the print and broadcast journalists who have spent the last two days talking and writing about us."

The Sun has had Page Three as a feature for 44 years but has been criticised multiple times by different organisations for being outdated and sexist.

The absence of a Page Three girl on both Monday and Tuesday this week coincided with The Times' report that News Corp executive chairman Rupert Murdoch had signed off the decision of dropping the feature.

Now, The Times has set the record straight in its latest edition, saying that its sister paper "made a clean breast of it and admitted there's still some nudes to report".

Campaign group No More Page Three was founded back in 2012 and has since gained support from anti-sexism charities and a number of MPs, with an online petition against the feature drawing more than 215,000 signatures so far.

The Irish edition of The Sun newspaper stopped publishing topless pictures two years ago.

Steve Hewlett told BBC's Newsnight: "It's [The Sun] always had a sense of mischief about it and, I might be wrong, but this smells to me very much like The Sun trying to say 'don't write us off yet, we still have a sense of mischief'.

"Is Page Three on its way back full time? Personally, I very much doubt it."


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