Smolensk Sun Says

Hello! Here in Smolensk butcher shop, we get exclusive justification in Smolensk edition of The Sun of paper decision to publish naked picture of Prince Harry. Here transcript (translated back into appropriate English by local egghead Student Arkady).

Smolensk Sun Says…

Today we’ve published pictures of Britain’s very own Prince Harry. In the buff. And very buff you look too, Your Royal HIGHNESS! We’re not invading your privacy. We’re not degrading you, sir. What could be better for your image with our salt of the earth readers - they love you, they do! - than being well fit without kit in their fave daily? You were big news before. But how BIG are you now? Hazza the Wazza! You look so fab we even thought about putting a comment by you on your news alongside Your Nakedness. Like you were Lisa, 18, from Dagenham. You know, “I think The Sun’s decision to publish a candid images of me today shows that David Dinsmore is a worthy inheritor to the mantle of such greats as Ben Bradlee at the Washington Post. David is now the world’s most respected advocate of a fearless, dignified and crusading press. A press that stands up to tyranny and oppression, by exposing, laying bare, unveiling, denuding and divesting the TRUTH. As the Roman satirist Juvenal might have put it, sine libertate promulgare tabulae nudae principorum, libertas cadet.”

For that’s the point. We’re publishing shocking NAKED pictures to protect FREEDOM. Our freedom. Your freedom. The freedom of the world. Because if we can’t print these pictures, what next? We hesitated, of course. Under the horrific Leveson tyranny - a tyranny that already stops us even thinking about hacking the phones of abducted children to bring you the stories YOU want - we hesitated. But then we realised. If we don’t publish these pictures, how will we know we are free? Free to uncover the next Watergate, the next Jonathan Aitken, the next Cash for Access. Not that we broke those stories. We serve YOU, our readers. And we know what you want. Naked pictures. But we also know when you look at today’s crown jewels you smile. Because you know you’re safe from oppression. And when you look at one of our gorgeous Page 3 stunners, you say “Phwoarr, look at the lovely freedom-protecting bazungas on that!” Because in stripping some busty Basildon babe’s bouncing baps, or uncovering the choicest cuts of Royal meat and two veg, we protect the freedom you know we’d need to investigate something serious we’ve decided you’ve decided matters. 

So that’s what we’re doing today. We’re not publishing a nob’s knob at half lob to please the mob. We’re defending the dignity and liberty of the Fourth Estate. Your Fourth Estate. We’re defending YOU. 

And we are fearless and will go EVEN FURTHER. Tomorrow we start our new campaign: Kit Off for Freedom! To show we aren’t cowed by Leveson’s attempts to stop us insinuating that strange landlords are probably murderers, in the way we know you want us to, we’re encouraging YOU, our readers, to send us pictures of yourselves. In the NUDE! We want to see you in the bath, on your sunbed, at the doctors, straddling the lavvy.

And we’re taking the lead! Yes, over the coming weeks Soaraway Sun editors and reporters - past and present - will appear as you’ve never seen them before. Wow! Davids Dinsmore and Yelland, with Trevor Kavanagh and Toby Young: Mooning across the Newsroom! (Or is that their gleaming and glistening heads?!) Andy Coulson massaging Oil of Olay on James Murdoch’s ribbed and rippling chest. Shaun Custis and Richard Littlejohn sharing the Lynx Tempest Shower Gel. Look! Rebekah’s left the Goody Proctor dress at home today and she’s flopping out of Wapping! Has Kelvin lost his Calvins? And in this week’s Sun on Sunday Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove explains why he’s happy that our full page spread of - guess who? - our very own Rupe showing his bendy dong to Wendi Deng means we’re part of a press free enough from meddling regulation to investigate his private emails - if we ever decide that’s what you want us to do.

The Sun: Rubbing Foam on the Naked Torso of Truth Since 1964.

[And inside tomorrow’s paper, Who’s that giving Armitage Shanks a golden shower? It’s Number One QC, Robert Jay!]