The Sun's Page 3 Photographer, Evening Standard

Wednesday, November 08, 2000

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'Women like to look at Page Three and compare themselves'; The Page Three 'stunna' is 30 years old. JAMES SILVER meets the man for whom topless girls have become a way of life.

IT was 1970 and The Sun was celebrating its first birthday.

The editor, Larry Lamb, had this message for his readers: "From time to time, some self-appointed critic stamps his tiny foot and declares that The Sun is obsessed with sex," he announced. "It is not The Sun, but the critics, who are obsessed. The Sun, like most of its readers, likes pretty girls. And if they are as pretty as today's Birthday Suit girl, 20-year-old Stephanie Rahn, who cares whether they are dressed or not?"

The topless Page Three girl was born. The young snapper who took Stephanie's picture was Beverley Goodway - and he's been doing it ever since.

"Originally, I wanted to go off to the war in Vietnam, well at least I thought I did. But I photographed two road accidents and soon realised I didn't like to photograph nasty things. I took pleasure in photographing beauty."

Goodway's lair is a hot, cluttered photographic studio off the Gray's Inn Road. Shots of Page Three "stunnas" adorn the walls. Good-way is sitting on a sofa squirming at the prospect of being interviewed. And, worse, being photographed.

With his wire-rimmed glasses and mop of silvery hair,he looks like an Oxbridge philosophy don.

He's 57. "When girls come for the first time, I encourage them to bring mums or boyfriends.

Boyfriends can make or break the session. If the boyfriend's against it, the girl will give up somewhere along the line. But if he comes in and meets me, he soon realises he doesn't have anything to worry about. He can see it's on a pretty professional basis." Goodway's career began at The Daily Mail in 1965, when he was sent off to cover football. He wanted to move into fashion but was "far too shy with the models. Then, after a spell at The Times, where he endured yet more football and "being sent round the City to photograph businessmen behind desks", he joined The Sun where he began snapping scantily clothed women.

"Bit by bit, I found that by putting a bikini on a girl I got a bigger picture and moved from the back of the paper onto Page Three. For me, it was a gentle transition."

Most of the models come to him via agencies, and the majority of them - some 30 rolls of film and a four-hour session later - will eventually make it into The Sun.

In addition, every week more than 50 wannabes write to him on spec.

"Some of the pictures are grim," he says. "They're often holiday snaps sent in by their mothers. Sometimes they are even fully clothed."

Jo Hicks, a now-established model, won a Baywatch lookalike competition in The Sun and was told by an agent that she could make a small fortune if she posed for Page Three. At first she wasn't keen.

Then she changed her mind. After seven sessions with Goodway, Jo finally got her break. Since then she's appeared on the Big Breakfast, in the film East is East and in lad-mags like Maxim.

"You can imagine how nervous I was when I first walked in," she says. "But he made me feel totally at ease. There are some dodgy photographers about, but Beverley definitely isn't one of them."

MAYBE not, but he must have faced some flak over the years, not least from old adversaries such as anti-Page Three campaigner, now Cabinet Minister, Clare Short.

"No," says Goodway. "That's the extraordinary thing. I've led a very sheltered life. I'm shut away in a studio. I get endless requests to do television debates, but I turn everything down. I'm not a debater, I'm a photographer."

Besides, he says, women actually like Page Three. "I think what people don't realise is that women do enjoy looking at pictures of girls, obviously in a different way to men. Women like to look at Page Three and compare themselves.

Although, obviously, when the girls are huge in certain areas they feel challenged."

Goodway thrived under Eighties editor Kelvin MacKenzie. Suddenly models not only went topless, but became celebrities in their own right. Sam Fox, for example, found herself on the news pages draped in the Union Jack, urging readers to "support our boys" in the Falklands.

MacKenzie's successor, Stuart Higgins, was less keen. "The problem was he wanted location shots - and the pictures lost some of their impact as a result," says Goodway.

When present editor David Yel-land took the chair, rumours abounded that Rupert Murdoch wanted to axe the Page Three girl.

Certainly, Rebekah Wade, then Sun deputy editor and now at the helm of the News of the World, was no fan. Goodway refuses to implicate Wade, but says he knew his enemies were circling. "I never discovered who it was and who it wasn't, but it was obviously a close call about a year ago, coming up to the millennium. Though no one admitted to it E" In the event, Yelland merely ordered a facelift. The pictures were given a "cleaner, more fash-iony look" and the dated, punning captions were ditched. Recently, Goodway has also moved the emphasis away from girls with huge breasts to what he describes as a "more moderate" look.

"They always said we couldn't change Page Three. But we have in our own way."

(The Evening Standard, November 8th 2000)

Posted by James Silver - On Wednesday, November 08, 2000

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