Claire Tully is Ireland's first Page 3 girl, but her degree in biochemistry and immunology challenges the stereotype. Ahead of her reality TV debut, she talks about topless modelling, feminism and why breast cancer charities declined her offer of help, writes Anthea McTeirnan
FOND OF A knee-jerk reaction? Claire Tully will definitely give you one. The 24-year-old from Lucan became Ireland's first Page 3 girl this year and takes part in celebrity reality show Fáilte Towers, which starts tonight on RTÉ1. She ticks all the boxes. Beautiful? Check. Blond? Check. Dumb? Now hold on a minute . . .
It is no faint praise that the Sun has chosen to package Tully as "the world's brainiest Page 3 girl" given that savvy previous incumbents - Samantha Fox, Linda Lusardi, Jordan, Keeley Hazell - have proven to have more than a modicum of intelligence. Tully has perfect figures: 32-25-33 (vital statistics); 600 (Leaving Cert points); and a first (degree in biochemistry with immunology from Trinity College Dublin). QED.
With attributes like those, you would think life would be plain sailing - but things have got pretty bumpy for Tully during the past few weeks.
For taking part in Fáilte Towers, all the contestants will be able to donate €5,000 to a charity of their choice. Tully wanted to give her winnings to a breast-cancer charity. "My mum was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005 and had a mastectomy," she explains. Her late grandmother also had breast cancer.
She says that her desire to make a contribution to breast cancer research was one of the reasons she decided to do Page 3 in the first place. "It was to get a profile in Ireland that I'd use to help breast cancer charities. What has happened has raised the question of whether I'll ever be able to do anything for breast cancer in Ireland."
Ireland's three major breast cancer charities - the Marie Keating Foundation, Breast Cancer Ireland and the National Breast Cancer Research Institute (NBCRI) - have all declined to accept a financial contribution from Tully. Máirín Clancy of the NBCRI says the organisation has "no comment to make on it. We decided not to accept it". Chief executive of the Marie Keating Foundation Lillian McGovern tells The Irish Timesthat because the organisation "provides services to women who have been affected by breast cancer, there is a danger those women may be offended. Therefore we decided it would be best not to accept the money."
She's not taking it personally, but Tully says she is disappointed by these charities' reactions, especially since the Sun's Page 3 girls did a calendar for the UK's Breakthrough Breast Cancer charity. "The charity said they'd be delighted. It's completely acceptable in the UK.
"These Irish charities may think that it will offend women to take money off someone like me, with the image I have. But every single day everything reminds them they have breast cancer. It's not about me. I see it with my own mother. It's ongoing. Every time they put on their bra. Every time they pick up their prosthesis. To say that everyone who has had breast cancer will be upset by me is to portray them as very bitter women when they'd actually do anything not to have another woman go through the same thing.
"The main concern of these charities is women who have breast cancer, but that's my main concern as well. They have their reasons and I have mine. I still want to get the money to breast cancer. It's not like I'm going to be in Fáilte Towers presenting an image of Page 3. I am going to be wearing a uniform. I am going to be filmed working."
The Irish Cancer Society has accepted Tully's offer, however. Jill Clark, head of fundraising, said this week: "The society is delighted that Claire has kindly chosen to donate all the proceeds raised throughout the duration of her appearance on the show to Action Breast Cancer, a programme of the Irish Cancer Society."
BEING SO CLOSE to the issue, Tully has decided that her personal interest in breast-cancer research is too great for her to "distance myself from the issue in the lab", so she has decided to specialise in HIV research. Last year she landed a research PhD place at Oxford, only to discover that she would have her research fees paid but would not qualify for a stipend to cover her living expenses, as UK students do. It made taking up the offer an impossibility.
The PhD disappointment had followed another, slightly different setback. The previous Christmas, Tully had happened upon her then boyfriend's copy of men's magazine FHM's annual High Street Honeys publication. "I was looking at the girls, and I thought 'I could do this'. So I entered, along with 13,000 others, and made it to the top 100. But the voting wasn't open to Ireland, so I didn't make the final cut. That's when I decided to look for a PhD . . . "
Tully's FHMappearance, though, attracted attention from Irish tabloids. " The Irish Sunrang me and asked me if I'd like to do Page 3. I'd already done a photo shoot with a well-known Scottish glamour photographer who had contacted me after the FHM thing, so the Sun bought the picture and used that in March."
So she didn't feel under any pressure to pose topless? "I wouldn't do something if I felt pressurised, and if I didn't like something I would say they can't use it."
What Tully lacks in stature she makes up for in self-assurance, a quality that enabled her to hold it together while experiencing bad bullying throughout her secondary-school years in Lucan. It's the same strength that made her stand tall when some students at TCD took exception to the working-class, grant-aided, brainy girl in their class, teasing her and, once, stealing some slides she's prepared for a presentation.
After her March debut in the Sun, she did another, which appeared on June 11th. The raison d'être of this particular shoot - besides getting them out for the lads, of course - was to urge Irish voters to support the Sun's editorial line and vote No to the Lisbon Treaty.
Tully was in London a week ago doing her second - and more typical - Page 3 shoot. "Any guy would probably kill to be there," says Tully. Picture it, if you will: 12 glamour models, including Tully, running around a house with just knickers on, waiting to pose for the Sun's chief Page 3 photographer, Alison Webster. You have to walk around in your pants, explains Tully, to allow time for any marks caused by your bra to subside before you are photographed.
She is full of praise for the Sun's handling of what the publication charmingly refers to as its "stable" of girls. "The Sun over in the UK is very much the high-brow tabloid when it comes to glamour modelling, so the Page 3 girls are looked after properly."
How much are you paid for appearing topless? "It all depends on how regularly you're featured," says Tully. "And there are other jobs that come from it."
So . . . on to the F-word. Many people think the continued promotion of naked women in the Sun and in other publications is demeaning to women. Would she consider herself a feminist? "I'm not really a bra-burning person," says Tully, before we both have an ironic giggle. "I think there's a natural thing. There are women and then there are men. We are just attracted to each other."
She doesn't think the lack of boys' bits in newspapers makes all the space devoted to breasts a tad unfair. "Women look for something more than an initial physical attraction. They're a bit deeper," says Tully. "The girls who do Page 3 get a lot of respect from guys. Page 3 doesn't give women less power - in a way it gives them more power."
TULLY REJECTS THE notion that Page 3 is soft porn or may contribute to violence against women. "The fact is that people were raping people before Playboy. I don't think it's a factor. In fact, men's mags can be a preventative outlet," she says.
As for going further, Tully says that taking her top off is as far as she plans to go. "I just don't think people need to see all that. And I mean no disrespect to the girls who do it, but it's just not for me."
As Tully embarks on her first reality-TV experience, she's not concerned that she'll provide reels of incriminating footage for the programme's editors. And as for celebrity, well, it's a word Tully can't get her head around. She is still startled, she says, when she goes out and people recognise her. It's something she's going to have to get used to.
Fáilte Towers begins on RTÉ1 tonight at 9.40pm