In 1987, the tabloid press in Britain was at the peak of its powers. The Sun newspaper, with its brash celebrity scoops and strident support for Margaret Thatcher – who won her third general election that year – was selling almost 4m copies a day.
Competition for stories and readers was relentless, resulting in ever more salacious and lurid editorial devices to win a slice of the readership from rivals on the newsstand. The Sun stood atop the tabloid market, its topless Page 3 girls credited with a share of its popularity. It was against this backdrop that the Sunday Sport, a red-top publication occupying the seediest corner of Fleet Street, launched a feature that even by its own standards appeared to plumb the depths of journalistic ethics.
