More hardline Islamic countries have always been a tad prudish over the exposure of titillating female body parts which means there is no actual equivalent of page 3 of the Sun in the Saudi tabloids. Legendary Salford “punk poet” and Arctic Monkeys idol John Cooper Clarke once saw fit to declare that “you never see a nipple in the Daily Express”, and by the same token you will never see a nipple on a semi-legal Saudi Arabian cassette cover.
Although that does not necessarily mean you will not see a page 3 model on a Saudi Arabian semi-legal cassette cover, as the proliferation of dodgy Samantha Fox pop compilations in the Gulf States stands as testament (and more about that later).
But back to nipples, and as the Smiths cover above goes to show, male nipples are no exception to this. In a rare early act of creative censorship, a fitted skin-tight shirt has been drawn on the eponymous debut album’s cover star, with pockets covering up the offensive non-mammary glands on the cover, along with a collar and buttons.
Wonder if they realised about the other mammary glands INSIDE the box when it came to the Saudi release of Hatful of Hollow and the track “Handsome Devil”?
