We Brits, we love a pair of breasts. From Diana Dors to Barbara Windsor, Sam Fox to Jordan, some of our best-loved national treasures have come to light thanks to their, er, treasures. And Keeley Hazell, The Sun’s latest Page 3 “stunna” to hit the big time and our model in the gallery above alongside Katie Price, is doing her bit to keep the tradition alive. You may not instantly recognise her, but we assure you, you’ve seen her before: right now, the 21-year-old’s heroic bazookas can be seen plastered across the sides of buses with nothing but a couple of strategically placed 10p pieces for cover.

Like all Page 3 girls, Hazell’s big selling point – apart from the obvious – is her normality. It all started for this quintessential girl next door three years ago, when she won The Sun’s Page 3 Idol, and since then readers have been treated to her bounteous baps countless times. Nuts, FHM and their ilk have been quick to follow, and a career in television beckons. As she sweetly puts it: “I’m not the prettiest woman in the world, and I haven’t got the best body, but I’ve got a good amount of both. It’s about the whole package.”

And quite a package it is, with its tiny, nipped-in waist, long, glossy locks and amazing 32E boobs (all natural, thank you very much). She’s not going to win any prizes for conversation, but she seems sweet enough (“Yeah, they all start out like that,” remarks her manager grimly, who has also crafted the careers of Kelly Brook, Holly Valance and Imogen from Big Brother).

“I remember saying when I was younger that I wanted to be a glamour model, but not knowing what it was,” Hazell says. She doesn’t seem embarrassed by what her dream job actually entails. After all, she points out, these days, there’s nothing remotely odd about flashing a bit of boobage. “I mean, we’re so used to seeing fashion models half-naked. I think Kate Moss has got her boobs out more than she has her clothes on.” Quite so.

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By Gemma Soames

PAGE 3 “STUNNAS” BY DOM JOLY

Excellent, I’ve got to write an essay on breasts. And I get paid for it. You didn’t get this kind of thing to do for prep at school. Mind you, I’m not sure what I would have written about back then, anyway. I remember being 14 and the whole year in my boarding house getting excited that we had got away with managing to order The Sun as our newspaper of choice. Every day, we would open it, and there would be a long (maybe slightly too long), appreciative silence as we all took in that morning’s Page 3 “stunna”.

Soon, we were moving on to actually interacting with the opposite sex. We would get to do such exciting things as a quick fondle over a cashmere jumper. Girls didn’t seem quite as ready to whip them out as Linda Lusardi. As puberty progressed, I started to realise that breasts came in gloriously different shapes and sizes – hardly any of them looked like the ones in The Sun.

I think that rather disappointed some of my contemporaries. Most of them kept reading The Sun and eventually became Tory MPs. For me, once I’d sampled the real things, I moved on to more grown-up newspapers and embarked on a lifetime of intensive research into all things mammary.

In summary, then – breasts are great and very useful and . . . great.

AIR ON A B CUP BY SHANE WATSON

If you haven’t got much in the way of breasts yourself, you are naturally of the opinion that smallish is best, and that big breasts are rather vulgar, and not very rock’n’roll. That’s how I used to feel, anyway. Now, I find large breasts anywhere from a bit much to positively threatening. Of course, there is nothing so sexy as youthful breasts – braless under vests, or gamely propping up strapless tops – and I like a Jennifer Aniston-sized bosom in a demure cashmere sweater.

But the modern-day bosom is rarely contained or discreet – it’s pumped up to bursting with chicken fillets and two kinds of tit tape, if not surgery, and it’s right there in your face. Cleavage is something I have come to dread. So many breasts now are like weapons of mass destruction (look at Victoria Beckham’s, with the door-bell nipples – what are they made of, titanium?). These breasts aren’t of this world, never mind sexy.

I keep thinking of Agnetha from Abba, bouncing in her turquoise satin two-piece, and Pan’s People spinning round the Top of the Pops stage in slivers of chiffon. A 1970s bosom was soft, natural, always braless, and 100% feminine. Now, breasts are like urban armour, and they’ve lost their charm. Kirsten Dunst has 1970s breasts, but she’s about it.

YOUNG MAN’S FANCIES BY JAMES DELINGPOLE

“Phwoooaarr! Look at the boobs on that!” my father and his mates used to leer when we passed – this being the 1970s – what was probably known as a “well-stacked bird”, and their wives weren’t around. “What do you reckon to those, eh, James?”

And I used to reckon, well, not very much, actually. When you’re between about nine and 16, which is roughly the period your dad and his male friends say these manly bonding things to you (it gives them an excuse to regress, while also checking you’re not gay), you’re not such a big connoisseur of girls’ tits. Well, not in the way middle-aged men are, anyway.

Now I’ve hit middle age, I know exactly what my dad and his chums were on about. A nice pair of pert young breasts really is a very splendid thing, and I like gazing at them admiringly whenever the opportunity arises – awful though the moment is when you’re caught out and you have to look away quickly, pursued by one of those contemptuous, young-girl stares that says: “Who do you think you are, you filthy old man? Even if you were a billionaire, I wouldn’t look at you – you’re that far out of my league, oldster.”

Which is why the best way to view breasts – on a topless beach, say – is to do so vicariously through your son’s eyes, as I’ve started to do recently with my nine-year-old. “Aren’t they great, son?” I say. “Yes, dad,” he says, dutifully playing the game. He doesn’t really understand. But he will one day.

BOSOMS UNDER FIRE BY CHRISTINA LAMB

Breasts are not convenient in a war zone. Flak jackets are designed with men in mind, and the enamel plates seem specially placed to jab painfully into your breasts as they bounce up and down when you’re running under fire.

Breasts are also more of a curse than a blessing in the Islamic countries I report from. True fundamentalists are not supposed to look at a woman’s face, which means that they often stare fixedly at breast level, instead. Sometimes it irritates me so much, I wonder about directing my questions to their crotch, but I’ve never quite had the nerve.

My 32D cups hardly make me Jordan, but after 20 years on the road in places such as Afghanistan and Pakistan, my wardrobe is dedicated to hiding them, rather than to showing them off. While my friends buy skimpy tops to show off their décolletage, I am happy when I find flowing kaftans that give little hint of what is underneath. My shelves are taken up by shawls, not handbags.

Of course, expecting women to cover their vital assets doesn’t mean the men of these countries aren’t interested. The all-encompassing black abaya worn by women in Saudi Arabia rivals the burqa as the ugliest garment in the world – yet Harvey Nicks in Riyadh sells the sexiest lingerie I’ve ever seen. Last year, as the only woman at a dinner in the house of Afghanistan’s then minister of tribal affairs, I had to sit in a room of bearded men who were playing chess and watching full-on porn on his wide-screen television.

Breasts are also a nuisance when you are covering rallies in Pakistan, or walking through crowded bazaars such as Kabul’s bird market. However well covered you may think you are, simply being a western woman is like wearing a sign saying, “Grope me”, and hands appear from everywhere. Over the years, I’ve learnt to walk with my elbows sharply pointing out.

KEEPING IT REAL BY AA GILL

Bosoms are a secondary sexual characteristic. You’ve probably noticed that none of our closest relatives sports a rack worth mentioning. A gorilla’s fun bags aren’t worth a fiddle, and you couldn’t fancy a chimp in a wet-T-shirt competition. This is because they walk on all fours. If you walk on all fours, then some bloke walking behind you gets the full panoramic view.

When you start walking on two feet, it brings down the curtain – so to keep the chaps amused, you need a secondary sexual characteristic. Hence, titties. The cleavage imitates buttocks. And red lipstick . . . you’re way ahead of me. But neither of those is the real thing. They’re Brighton and Hove – all front. And as you get older, the real thing is all you’re interested in.

There’s something eternally adolescent about bosoms. Knockers are the shandy of sex, and what you do with them is essentially childish. We live in a sexually infantilised society. We give each other pet names and talk in toddler language. But there is a point when you grow out of bosoms – thankfully, at about the same time girls begin to grow out of theirs.

I was walking down the street with another middle-aged man, when a young girl with an impressively pneumatic figure passed us. He turned round and made that male noise that has no authenticated spelling. Good tits? I asked. “I didn’t notice,” he replied. “She just looked really kind."

THE EYEFUL OF THE BEHOLDER BY WALDEMAR JANUSZCZAK

There are so many breasts in art that you would have thought artists would be really good at depicting them. But they’re not. Although some stretches of art consist of little else – Indian statuary, Picasso’s late etchings – in only a handful of instances has art managed to show us breasts that you or I might actually have encountered. You know, soft ones, with some give in them, some weight, a bit of droop.

Breasts in art seem generally to have been ordered up from the same surgeon who created Victoria Beckham’s new ones. They’re hard, pointy and impossibly perky. It has been that way from the start. The Greeks always lied about breasts. No matter what age Aphrodite is supposed to be in a statue, her bristols are always those of a teenage cheerleader.

Of course, some artists gave us dodgy breasts because they knew no better. Michelangelo was probably the worst depicter of breasts there has ever been – they look like some golf balls stuck to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s chest – but that’s probably because he never saw any. Girls weren’t really his thing.

BREAST INTENTIONS BY TOM STUBBS

“It was the breast of times, it was the worst of times.” So begins Charles Dickens’s lesser-known work A Tale of Two Titties. Men of letters have always been captivated by breasts. Even the poet Morrissey demanded, “Let me get my hands on your mammary glands,” as a rallying cry of fretful frustration.

The male imagination has bosoms running through it like the words in a stick of rock. We are fascinated by their myriad variations – not only in size and shape, but in the ways a woman elects to package her threepennies and the manner in which she carries them. Proud, provocative temptresses put their God-given fruits on parade, while others carry them apologetically like puritan devil’s dumplings.

Over the years, a man learns to beware false profiteroles. Breast subterfuge in the form of bras is rife and that leads to further intrigue – the proof of the pudding being in the meeting, as it were. There’s also the nipple lottery. You can speculate, but you can never be sure what you’ll get.

The tactical question is what to do with the puppies once they are willingly at your disposal. There’s no official rubric for hand-to-gland combat. Managing pendulous breasts can be undignified if not executed with masterful aplomb. One at a time and from behind makes good sense. Avoid a kneading action, as it may appear you’re attempting to make one good one from a substandard pair. Big-breast specialists favour a weighing motion, I’m told.

Personally, I prefer to work with a pert, fashion-style breast. In such cases, nipples become focal (they are an underrated topic – we need technical names for the different types). Defiant, pointing nipples just dare one to administer a firm tweak. Depending on the recipient’s reaction, you can gauge exactly how merciless to become – a playful yelp usually means, take no prisoners.

ASSET MANAGEMENT BY MICHAEL HOLDEN

As civilised men, we are supposed to pretend we aren’t interested in breasts. But frankly, what’s the point? The world would be a better place for women of all sizes and inclinations if we just surrendered to the truth: that the cleavage is a design classic etched so deeply and effectively into our consciousness that to pretend otherwise is as futile as suggesting that food doesn’t make you feel hungry, and about as populist as clamping down on Christmas.

Breasts are victims of their own success. As a man whose response towards them is best described as “gravitational”, I am only too aware of how both the ownership and adulation of the fuller gland is taken for a sign of intellectual weakness. But a lifetime of qualitative research on my part has shown this to be far from universally the case. One can be equal parts Russ Meyer and Rubens, and be none the worse for either. In these times of increasing economic uncertainty, the morale-boosting effects and life-giving symbolism of the female breast are more crucial to our collective wellbeing than ever before. They aren’t called “assets” for nothing, you know – especially when you don’t get many of them to the pound.

THANKS FOR THE MAMMARIES BY ANDREW CLOVER

I’m 13. I’m on a skiing trip with Emma, who fascinates me, because she’s the sprinting champion at her school. One night, we’re drinking beer in a brightly lit flat, and she lays her head on my lap. She has blue-painted eyelids. She has tiny acne spots. She has full, fleshy breasts. I lean over and kiss her. Her lips part. What’s this? I open mine. Our tongues gently touch. It’s electrifying.

“I’m going outside,” she says. “I’ll get my coat.” I follow her to her flat. The window is showing moonlit mountains. We fall on the bed and kiss. A strange force grips me. I start untucking her shirt. It takes ages, but eventually I’m in. I pause the requisite moment and tickle her back. Then I move round and, trembling, I touch her left breast. It’s soft and shockingly feminine. I feel like I’m seeing the face of God. I know that we will love each other for ever.

The next morning, she chucks me. Back at school, I wake every morning feeling empty. I want to tell Emma: “I love you.” I want to say: “It doesn’t make sense. We can’t stop this now. Just once, you’ve got to let me see them.”