Duchess of Cambridge red cheeked again as Murdoch-owned Australian newspaper publishes bare bottom photos

An Australian newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch has become the second publication to run images of the Duchess of Cambridge’s bare bottom in its pages.

The photograph, initially published in German magazine Bild, was taken by a photographer during the recent royal tour of Australia.

The Duke and Duchess were visiting the Blue Mountains near Sydney when a blast of wind from a nearby helicopter blew up her Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dress and accidentally flashed her backside.

Bild ran the unpixelated image alongside shots of Kim Kardashian and her sister Khloe, declaring in a caption: “Khloe, Kim and Kate – backsides which have moved us these past few days.”

In contrast, the Sydney Daily Telegraph published it as part of a comment piece under the headline: “My bare lady: Derri-heir to the throne is fair game.”

In it, the author Annette Sharp criticised British publications for their “ridiculous” ban on printing the shots because of privacy.

“It seems a bit ridiculous to expect the rest of the world's media to follow suit, particularly in a world in which flesh and commercialism go hand in hand,” Sharp wrote.

“If the duchess can't be bothered protecting herself by having hem weights sewn into her garments, why should the media protect her?”

The photographer who took the shot, Diane Morel, who is local to the Blue Mountains, almost deleted the image before she realised what she had managed, in a split second, to capture.

“It wasn't until I got home and I popped my camera card into the computer that I realised what I had captured,” she told the Sydney Daily Telegraph.

She added that the money she earned from the image would go towards funding for a bushfire relief fund.

The controversial move by the tabloid is likely to spark another privacy row between Buckingham Palace and the European media.

It comes less than two years after the royal couple sued French magazine Closer for running topless photographs of the Duchess, taken as the couple holidayed at a chateau in the Provence region.

The Palace labelled the publication of the images a “grotesque” invasion of privacy.

It also comes after a pair of Australian radio presenters were forced to apologise for tricking a nurse treating the Duchess of Cambridge at hospital, where she was suffering from acute morning sickness, to give them details about her condition.

The nurse who took the call later took her own life.