Page 3 For the Show

The Sun’s Page 3 Girl phenomenon might be almost 40 years in existence, but to date no Irish topless model has appeared in the Irish edition of the red top tabloid. Until now, that is.

Dubliner Claire Tully, aged 24, is definitely not your stereotypical Page 3 girl. Far from it. Claire graduated from Trinity with an honours degree in biochemistry and she is now planning to study for a PhD at Oxford.
Claire, who currently works as a nail technician in a beauty salon, came to The Sun’s attention after she appeared in FHM’s so-called High Street Honeys Competition. She made it into the lads mag’s list of top 100 sexiest girls. So what is she like, behind the, well, behind the skimpies?
“I was originally going to go to Australia this year to do a PhD,” Claire told Hot Press, “but I broke up with my ex and that plan went out the window. And through the FHM competition, The Sun approached me and asked if I would be the first Irish ‘Page 3 Girl’. I took a couple of days to think through what would be the outcome of this, before deciding to go for it. Even the other night I was sitting down and thinking, ‘It’s so weird that I did it. Wow’!”
Claire says the plan now is to make further Page 3 appearance, as well as doing other ‘glamour’ photo shoots and – she hopes – TV appearances. She has been inundated with media requests since first appearing topless in The Sun last month – and an appearance on Sky’s Soccer AM has been lined up.
“Hopefully I’ll get signed with an agency in the UK because there is no glamour industry in Ireland,” she says.
Michael McNiff, editor of the Irish edition of The Sun, reckons Claire has what it takes to carve out a modelling career. “We had looked for an Irish Page 3 girl for a long time and we finally found the perfect good-looking woman, who is a brain-box to boot – she’s a ‘Ph-dd’,” he laughs. “We have had a lot of letters and photos from other Irish girls wanting to follow in Claire’s footsteps. Ireland has come a long way from the image of comely maidens dancing at the crossroads – we now have comely maidens on Page 3!”
So how is Claire handing the attention?
“I went to the cinema last Sunday and it was really weird, I could see this group of guys and one of them kept looking over at me and I could hear him saying, ‘It is her’, and I was like, ‘Jesus, no – not now!’ And as they were going into the cinema I could see them looking over their shoulders and hear them, ‘It is her! I’m telling you it is’. I was just like, ‘Get me out of here’!
“But nobody really recognises me when I’m walking around, so it’s grand. I don’t wear make-up during the day, so I do look really young – a lot younger than I am – and usually my hair is curly, so it’s kind of like a disguise for me!”
What was the reaction among her close family and friends?
“My friends were really supportive and told me to ‘go for it’. I work part-time in a nail bar and the clients coming in are really supportive too. My Mam is great about it because she knows I am going to try and raise awareness of breast cancer with this and if anybody approaches me about fundraising I’ll be up for it. My brothers are fine too,” she says.
Claire’s father, however, disapproves.
“My dad isn’t taking it too well. He thinks that I’m being exploited and that I’ll never get a job because of it! But, as I said before, The Sun haven’t exploited me in anyway. I’m 24 and I make my own decisions. I could have backed out at any minute. They asked me if I was sure and if I wanted to go ahead. I had plenty of opportunities not to go through with it.
“My dad will come around,” she adds. “It will just take him a little while. It’s a horrible feeling to know that you are doing something that maybe your dad would rather you didn’t do – but, at the end of the day, you can only make yourself happy and other people do come round. They get over things. My dad doesn’t have to look at it, you know? You just have to rise above what people are going to say and take it with a pinch of salt.”
Reaction from feminists has been muted, to say the very least. When asked for her thoughts on Ireland’s first Page 3 Girl, former Deputy Labour leader Liz McManus TD, a long-time feminist campaigner, said: “Hip hip hooray! That’s my reaction! There is too much pain and suffering in the world for something like this to be of any real significance. I suspect that it will help The Sun sell more copies.” Asked if she thought it was merely a bit of harmless fun, she responded: “I do indeed.”
Michael McNiff dismisses any criticism of the paper’s Page 3 feature as being sexist or exploitive. “Look,” McNiff points out, “We have had focus groups examining our Page 3 and not one complaint arrived from these. We are Ireland’s biggest-selling newspaper and over half our readers are female, so we wouldn’t be doing this if we thought it was offensive. We have a lot of female staff and they had no problem putting the page together. It’s just a lot of fun. Remember, this is how the likes of Jordan started out on her career.”
Despite her current five minutes of fame, Claire doesn’t see it as a career – she is determined to secure a PhD research scholarship.
“I have always wanted to go into HIV research and that’s why I did a degree at Trinity. I have always been interested in viruses and specifically HIV because it is so smart – it wipes out your immune system. I applied for Oxford and they were impressed with my interview, but basically they couldn’t fund me because I’m not a UK citizen.
“They got back to me and said, ‘Look, we’ll try to get funding for six months for you as a research assistant and that will give you chance of earning a PhD in the lab’. But, at the same time, there’s no guarantee. So I’m waiting to be re-interviewed, to see if I’ll get this research position. I’m not worried about it – it’s only a matter of time before I go into this area of research. I’m only young, I have forever to do it.”
It has a bit of a ring to it: Dr Claire Tully…