Will Page 3 go bust?

Today it's Nicola, 20, from London, with a bright, perky smile and bright, perky bosom who adorns Page 3 of The Sun. A pretty girl in a similar state of undress has appeared in the same place just about every day for 30 years, but today the question was: Is this the last Page 3 girl ever?

Britain's bestselling red top has a new editor - the first woman editor in the paper's history. She is Rebekah Wade, who when she was The Sun's deputy editor - before she went to run the News of the World - was known to be opposed to Page 3.

Roy Greenslade, former Daily Mirror editor turned media commentator, said: "One red herring - and a disappointment for feminist critics - is the belief that she will drop Page 3 girls. That won't happen."

Page 3 has come under fire ever since 20- year-old Stephanie Rahn became the first to strip off in November 1970. Despite the critics it proved massively popular, and over the years some of the Page 3 models became household names - girls like Vivien Neves, who died recently, Jilly Johnson, Linda Lusardi and Samantha Fox.

Of all its enemies, the most vocal was Labour MP Clare Short, who unsuccessfully tried to get it banned with her Indecent Displays ( Newspapers) Bill. The Sun immediately denounced her as "killjoy Clare", and mounted a campaign to prevent the ban.

Today, in a Radio 4 debate, Labour MP Lynn Jones kept up the Clare Short tradition, saying: "It's not the portrayal of nudity that's problematic, it's the way Page 3 treats women as commodities," she said.

"The women are not just stripped of their clothes, they are stripped of their individuality and their sexuality and treated as objects for men's pleasure."

Tory MP Julie Kirkbride described it as "harmless fun", adding of Ms Wade: "Given that sex sells most things and that sex keeps the human race alive I'd be astonished if she does abolish-Page 3." Former Cosmopolitan editor Marcelle D'Argy Smith said: "The Sun is about tits and football. It doesn't matter that people think it's so last century, she won't do it, because there would be an outcry."

From its inception, Page 3 aroused the ire of feminists. Germaine Greer was an early opponent, claiming The Sun was "subverting the morals and the quality of the working class in a most cynical fashion".

Andy Coulson, 34, Ms Wade's deputy, replaces her as editor of the News of the World.