The Sun shines bright at the Oxford Union's Page 3 girl debate

As I came round the corner of St Michael's Street, slightly late in hastily assembled eveningwear, there was a huge double-decker bus emblazoned with Sun logos. It was surrounded by gawping students in penguin suits and what a past generation would call “a bevy of beauties”. Oh dear. There's always a moment when you wonder why the hell you said yes to the Oxford Union. Especially to propose the motion: “This House believes that Page 3 is unacceptable in the 21st century.” The Sun is aggressively biblical in self-defence. “Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the Moon, clear as the Sun, and terrible as an army with banners?” They were terrible with banners all right. They don't take challenges lightly.

Not only did their battlebus field the managing editor, Graham Dudman, the legendary snapper Arthur Edwards and the veteran topless model and photographer Zoe McConnell, but five “curvy colleagues - Peta, Ruth, Mel, Becky, and Sam”, all dressed up in pinstriped suits and stilettos with red Sun hankies in swelling breast pockets. The Sun had already filled half a page of the paper with a preview, describing the proposers as “sourpusses” and in my case “a starchy Radio 4 presenter”. To back them up in debate, they had a dissipated-looking figure called Martin Daubney, the editor of Loaded magazine. On my allocated side were Carol McGiffin, of the ITV programme Loose Women, and Peter Howarth, who used to edit Esquire but thought better of it.

And there should have been the proposition's heavy hitter, the fierce lesbian feminist Julie “Sexual desire is a social construct” Bindel from The Guardian. Only at the last minute she wasn't there. Celia Walden from The Daily Telegraph was also billed, and also pulled out. As I say, there's always a moment when you wonder why you said yes. Some people act on it. But Times girls are not wimps. We throw our chests out, and go for it.

Anyway, I was nostalgic. Forty years have elapsed since I first went to the Oxford Union and squeaked a few lines of argument from the floor of its fusty miniature Parliament chamber, awed by the busts of Gladstone and Lord Salisbury and by the apparent sang-froid of the budding politicos who ran it. Over the next three years I graduated to speaking from the battered dispatch box, and discovered to my glee that the sang-froid is a fragile fake, and the Union is not so much the home of great debate as just a top place to get laughs. The audience is young and blithe and the setting gloomily pompous: that combination works better than any comedy club. Besides, last term I was booked and got ill at the last minute, so I felt guilty. I actually wanted to defend Page 3 - I mean, after all, who cares? - but the new term's president, Ben Tansey, begged me to attack it instead. So there I was, a conscripted sourpuss trapped between the mouldering spires and the Sun battlebus.

The Page 3 girls were the sweetest creatures imaginable: groomed to a hair, politely holding open the door of the Ladies, all on best behaviour like little girls at a confirmation class. McConnell, the senior wrangler and elected spokeswoman, defied editorial edict by wearing pinstriped trousers instead of a short skirt; but the other five sat - pale, flawless, beautiful legs demurely crossed - on the front bench opposite us while several hundred young men gazed and gazed, and women students shook their heads in rueful wonder. Never have so many perfect legs been lined up on such mouldy leather. Even the bust of Gladstone leered.

We were, by then, mercifully all well-oiled from dinner. My principal opponent was the managing editor, Graham Dudman. Those innocent of media structures may not be aware of this fact about tabloid papers: that between the alarming proprietors on high and the farouche rabble of editors - the Piers Morgans, Kelvin MacKenzies and Rebekah Wades - there is always an insulating layer of businesslike, gentlemanly, middle-aged, wry chaps with nice manners and no agenda beyond balancing the books. Dudman is one such. A pussycat. By halfway through dinner I was happily agreeing to be photographed pretending to strangle him, and raised a glass to Arthur (“Snap that royal!”) Edwards as he surreptitiously beamed the incriminating shot to his picture desk.

When the elfin Mr President stood up in his white tie and tails and delivered a prolonged Latin grace, I muttered, “Isn't that the same one you use on The Sun?”, and Dudman collapsed in snorts. We got on just fine.

Though I am not sure that he (or the leggy lovelies) were quite expecting the tedious Oxford Union ritual. When they talk about “Private Business” down at The Sun they probably don't mean a treasurer's report and 20 minutes of impenetrable debate on an agenda motion about electoral tribunal appeal regulations. The editor of Loaded looked a bit restless. The girls sat, perfect and smiling, a seated leg show. The Union regulars, indistinguishable from their peers of 1968, argued earnestly about the threat to democracy posed by an emendation of Clause 140-something, subsection (a) iv-vii. Those who had come to see an argument about naked breasts yawned.

At last it began. I had bagsed to go first, not least because I had no intention whatsoever of spending more than 15 seconds on the hairy old argument that pin-ups trivialise sexuality and normalise the commodification of sex. They do, but what the hell? Even the BBC does that, these days. I had planned to leave that stuff to Guardian Woman. And Sun girls are neither raunchy nor explicit (Dudman rose with dignity, on a point of information, to tell me that his girls always wear pants. If you can call them pants). No, my main argument was just that they are breathtakingly old-fashioned. They are out of George Formby-land: “Oooh, Mr Window-Cleaner! And me without my bra!” They are girls who run charity marathons and cuddle kittens. They are coy, sporty, bland, smiley. They are Joan Hunter-Dunn with her kit off. In an age of sinister anorexic models they sport plenty of fine flesh; in an age of ghastly lad-mags like Loaded, with their orgasm-faking websites and back-end splay shots, they are heartbreakingly soppy. Thus, not 21st century at all. I argued that their strained connection to the day's news is beyond weird: “Lovely Peta supports the Royal Horse Artillery!” The House laughed. Dudman made another point of information: “She does, actually!” Lovely Peta smiled and recrossed her legs, causing numerous young men to lose the thread.

Thin arguments, but a happy romp. What you have to understand about the Oxford Union (in case you thought it was a junior House of Lords) is that it remains the kind of place where you can get a big laugh by saying: “I've nothing against breasts. Some of my best friends are complete tits.” Or: “I don't know why there are so many ads for laser eye surgery in Loaded; do you think the readers go blind a lot?” Look, I know it's not op-ed stuff, but you work to your audience, OK? Especially when landed with a hopeless cause. I pleaded with feeble sophistry that there is simply no room for ooh-Mr-Window-Cleaner pin-ups in a trollopy world where WI members flash their cupcakes and learn pole-dancing, and you can get online any time for 57 seconds of someone called Chantelle simulating sex with a glove puppet.

Dudman spoke gravely of The Sun's peerless reporting strengths and ethical standards; McGiffin cobbled up a spirited argument that the paper's increased circulation injured her shoulder when she did a paper round in the 1970s. Howarth gave a heart-rending account of the life of an Esquire editor, and McConnell the model photographer took her speech as a Q&A session, only once losing her aplomb (“Ooh, this is quite hard, innit?”). The Loaded man voiced a prepared rant against several hard feminist points that nobody had actually made because the Guardian lady didn't turn up. From the floor several students pointed this out (“Nobody ever said they wanted to ban it!”). On the bench opposite, the line of Page 3 girls in pinstripes smiled and sometimes recrossed their stupendous legs, the boys looked on wide-eyed, and I felt shamingly maternal towards all of them. Bless.

They won, of course: 230 students streamed through the Noes lobby and 129 through the Ayes. But never mind Ayes and Noes; the Legs had it. I stole McConnell's red Sun hanky from her breast pocket as a souvenir, gave dear Mr Dudman a hug and fled for home.

Later, The Sun report under McConnell's name crowed: “I took on the eggheads of Oxford University and beat them ... I felt naked at the dispatch box ... we made jaws and mortar boards drop with our impressive arguments and cheeky chat.” It claimed that “boffins” wolf-whistled in the hall where “previous speakers include Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, Winston Churchill, Clint Eastwood and Diego Maradona ... But the breast side won”. Yay! Go, Sun.

And I sense a certain personal détente. The paper's piece ends: “PS: The Sun would like to apologise to Libby Purves. We retract yesterday's allegation that she is ‘starchy'. From now Libby will be referred to as: Libby, 58, from Southwold, Suffolk.”

Which, coming from the paper with the “strongest reporting team on Fleet Street” is a bit of an own goal, since I've never lived in Southwold in my life. They must be thinking of my mum. Whoops, Mr Window-cleaner! Ooh! Mind your slip!