Cookstown man inspires The Sun’s page three logo

Birmingham based Rich Newell has found himself caught up in the middle of a media frenzy when he posted a goodbye Tweet to The Sun’s page three - a three turned on its side.

And his cheeky idea has now been adopted by the newspaper, which changed the way ‘page 3’ was displayed in the top right hand corner of the page on both Thursday and Friday.

“I work in advertising, I’m a copy writer, and we sort of work on ideas for brands,” he told the Mail.

“When I heard the news on Tuesday [Jan 20] that page three was coming to an end - obviously I was aware of the no-more page three campaign - and I thought what a fitting way to say goodbye than turning the three on its side in an inoffensive manner.

“I just basically did it up on the computer, put it on Twitter and when it got a bit of traction I thought, well actually I could send it to the Sun, and see if they’d change it in the top corner.”

Following some notice on Twitter on January 20, Rich said he then contacted The Sun with his idea.

“I sent it to them and David Dinsmore, the editor, called,” the 34-year-old explained.

“A lovely guy, he just said ‘we really like the idea and we’re gonna run it from Thursday’ and made me aware of the big PR student that was going to happen that day - two worlds collided so it was a bit of a mad one.

“What started off as a very small idea, has gone quite big.

“It’s been in there yesterday and today, so I think it might be a permanent feature.

“I’m hoping people don’t take it the wrong way [as] it was done as a very simple goodbye, so it was not supposed to cause offence.

“It was like a cheeky reminder of what used to be there, and as it’s not photographic [I’m hoping] it shouldn’t offend anyone.”