Revealed: David Sullivan’s Sunday Sport sold sexualised images of 15-year-old girls

Sunday Sport’s ‘Countdown to 16’ used revealing photoshoots with young girls to trail topless pictures published after their 16th birthdays

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.