If you have been following the mounting controversy over the Sun’s disgraceful retouching of news photos, then you know that Jer submitted video footage demonstrating that a forceful grope really could move a breast into the awkward position depicted in the Sun’s alleged photo of Prince Harry groping Natalie Pinkham. But without explaining how the ungroped left breast could similarly be mangled, Jer was refused the Gleeson Researcher of the Century Award. Undaunted, the intrepid blogger has proposed a new hypothesis, delightful in its simplicity.

To illustrate his new speculation, Jer painted in the bottom half of the Sun’s photo. As you can see, Jer thinks Natalie’s left side might have been pushed up by a table. Jer says:

[T]his is a representation of a completely plausible situation. Sure, we don’t know that this is what actually happened, but I feel that anyone would have to admit that a table could certainly account for Harry’s “weight bearing” arm, the lifted breast, and the mystery “floating lemon wedge” — which, inexplicably, was never initially questioned.

While this elegant theory is certainly inventive, I’m afraid it suffers from four problems.

1. UNLIKELIHOOD It is implausible that any woman would casually sit at a table whose top edge was cutting into her thorax, raising her breasts by three inches. I mean, have you ever walked into a pub and seen a woman — or man, for that matter — seated in this fashion? I’ll grant that it’s possible, but you’ll have to admit it’s just not done.

2. ABSURDITY A table simply would not account for the convexity connoted by the shading in the photograph. It is not realistic that setting a fatty appendage on a table would turn it into a bowl. The physics are all wrong.

3. IMPOSSIBILITY Even if Jer somehow proved that a table would shove a breast into this shape, it would still be impossible. Prince Harry is behind Natalie Pinkham, and pulling her towards him. Miss Pinkham, therefore, is being pulled backwards, away from any table which may be in front of her. So even if her left breast were situated on this table pre-grope, it would have fallen off post-grope.

4. LACK OF CITRUS The “floating lemon wedge,” from which Jer deduced the existence of a table, is not a lemon wedge.

Beneath a lemon’s yellow peel is a thick white wall, called the pericarp. There is no pericarp on the yellow disc in the photo. Also, it is too thin to be a lemon slice. A lemon could be sliced that thinly, but the slice would be floppy, and not this precise rigid disc.

Furthermore, there are definitely some red-and-white graphics on the disc, a feature which lemons lack. The resolution is not high enough to make these markings out clearly, but I adduce that this disc is a badge or button, pinned to Miss Pinkham’s shirt. Something along these lines, perhaps.

And so, once again I find myself reluctantly denying Jer the Gleeson Researcher of the Century Award. Much as I would like to reward his tenacity and inventiveness, I must hold him to the stated criteria, or else the award would lose its prestige.