Rupert Murdoch hints the Sun may ditch the nudity on Page 3

Rupert Murdoch has hinted that The Sun’s Page 3 girls may cover up in “fashionable clothes” in future, after 44 years appearing topless.

The media mogul raised the possibility in two tweets today.

In the first he appeared to defend the topless photographs, saying: “Brit feminists bang on forever about page 3. I bet never buy paper. I think old fashioned but readers seem to disagree.”

But in a second message on Twitter he added: “Aren’t beautiful young women more attractive in at least some fashionable clothes? Your opinion please.”

Mr Murdoch first suggested he was considering ending bare breasts on Page 3 in February last year.

Responding to a comment on Twitter that described the practice as of the “last century”, he replied: “You maybe right, don’t know but considering. Perhaps halfway house with glamorous fashionistas.”

In February 2012, the paper’s then editor, Dominic Mohan, told the Leveson Inquiry the pictures were “an innocuous British institution”.

Last year, the current editor David Dinsmore said he would keep them because it was what readers wanted.

But the No More Page 3 campaign, which began in 2012 , says the pictures “condition readers to view women as sex objects”. They have called on advertisers to boycott the paper over the issue.