IT WAS supposed to be no more than a warm-up for the epic slanging match of the World Cup. Even so, the display of Angela Merkel’s briefly exposed bottom in The Sun provoked the ire of the German Government and unleashed a tabloid tit-for-tat that could stagger on for weeks.

“This is certainly not traditional British courtesy,” Thomas Steg, a government spokesman, said of the photographs showing the German Chancellor changing into her swimming costume. “Both the Chancellor and her husband have a right to privacy.”

The mass circulation newspaper Bild, which posted more holiday photographs of Frau Merkel (fully clad) on its website, also jumped to her defence. “The English are mocking our Chancellor,” it said, reprinting the offending article with a carefully censored picture. “Where does this hatred come from?”

In the 100-word piece headlined “I’m big in the Bumdestag” and containing eight puns about bottoms, The Sun gave a backhanded compliment to Frau Merkel’s positive effect on the economy and its “much-improved bottom line”.

But that was not enough to appease politicians who felt The Sun had gone too far. “Very bad form,” said Eduard Lintner, of the Christian Democrats. “There should be no place for such pictures.”

Germans prefer their politicians fully clothed. When paparazzi photographed the former Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, in bathing trunks there was a minor sensation and people still shake their heads when recalling the sight of Tony Blair in tight trunks during a Barbados holiday three years ago.

The real battle of the British and German tabloids is yet to come. Football has traditionally prompted English puns about the Germans and an anguished response in Berlin.

World Cup stunts are being prepared by both sides. The first will be launched on St George’s Day, April 23, marking the start of a pre-World Cup orgy of national stereotypes.

Whether these journalistic adventures will be able to match the nonsense of years gone by — and headlines such as “Achtung! Surrender” and “Blitz the Fritz” — remains to be seen.

But Bild has already posed a list of questions for the English to answer. “Why do you look like freshly cooked lobsters after one day on the beach?” asked the paper in an earlier skirmish with British readers. And, more trenchantly: “Why have you never won the European Championship?”