I DON’T think banishing boobs on page three of The Sun ‘newspaper’ – and I use the word advisedly - is going to lead to many more people reading it, do you?

There are those who think this is just a cynical marketing ploy on the part of the Murdoch empire to focus attention on the blooper bore-away Sun because they haven’t really dropped pictures of bare breasts at all.

You can still see them on the online version of the scurrilous rag that thinks news is baring the innermost secrets of so-called celebrities, half of whom probably wouldn’t be in the public eye if they hadn’t bared their breasts in the first place.

You’ve only got to recount the superstardom of the likes of teenager Samantha Fox who happily displayed her endowments for all to see at the drop of a bra strap and famously earned more than the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher for doing so.

She was cheeky and brazen, just like the paper that published her, and nowhere was that more ably demonstrated than when she broke through the striking printers’ picket line at Fortress Wapping riding in a tank. Then she retired at the grand old age of 20, job done.

Or what about chest bearer Jordan who was The Sun’s favourite pin-up in the Nineties and went on to earn millions by flashing her private life across celeb magazine centre-folds and on populist TV, even if she had dropped her modelling name and reverted to plain Katie Price in a misguided bid to give people the impression she was someone serious to be reckoned with rather than a vacuous boob exposer.

Then of course there was Melinda Messenger from Swindon, who was supposed to epitomise every girl next door. Next door? You’ve got to be kidding - the girl next door to us doesn’t go round exposing herself in newspapers that’s for sure, and I bet most girls next door wouldn’t either.

Messenger enjoyed considerable exposure, if you’ll pardon the pun and after years showing her wares on the inside front right is now a television presenter. But that’s only because, in some strange and skewed moralistic judgement, Sun readers voted not to allow girls with breast implants to be page three pin-ups. Which is a bit ironic given that it was the agent who handled Samantha Fox who had advised Messenger to get implants in the first place to make to sure she was noticed….

It beats me why millions of people were interested enough in the antics of The Sun’s page three girls to put them on a pedestal to the extent they became superstars. Because surely they weren’t all blokes ogling their bits over their snap tin and mug of builders were they?

It was in 1970 that then editor Larry Lamb introduced page three as his answer to a vicious circulation war with the Daily Mirror. Sadly, it proved to be a winner, which just goes to show that people are easily pleased when it comes to getting a boobful over their morning cornflakes.

It’s hard to believe it was a phenomenon that survived a staggering 44 years in print, despite disgust being aired in Parliament at regular intervals over the years by indignant MPs who saw page three as being demeaning and exploitative of women.

The Sun’s answer to that was to ritualistically massacre their detractors by hurling personal abuse at them in print, describing them as fat or jealous like some caustic scratching-eyes-out kid in the playground.

But now the denigrators have, on the surface, got their way – in print at least - it’s turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. Except that circulation rivals the Daily Star have now jumped on the bandwagon by announcing that they’re going to continue the page three tradition in their equally scurrilous scandal sheet.

For, they say, page three is as British as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, fish and chips and saucy seaside postcards so there’s no question that it should be continued. They claim getting an eyeful in the mornings brightens their readers’ day during tough times. So that’s alright then – you can’t pay the gas bill, but having a gander at some woman’s exposed breasts will make everything ok again. As if….