The Sun (United Kingdom) a free special issue of "The Sun" was distributed by the Royal Mail to 22 million homes in England. The promotion, which did not include a Page 3 topless model, was announced in mid-May and was believed to be the first such freesheet issued by a UK national newspaper. The boycott in Merseyside following the newspaper's coverage of the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 meant that copies were not dispatched to areas with a Liverpool postcode. Royal Mail employees in Merseyside and surrounding areas were given special dispensation by their managers to allow them not to handle the publication "on a
Hillsborough disaster wider causes of the incident. Although the then-editor Boris Johnson did not write this piece, journalist Simon Heffer alleged he had written the first draft of the article "at Mr Johnson's request", and offered to apologise for its publication after it attracted "a furore in the city [of Liverpool]". Johnson apologised at the time of the article, travelling to Liverpool to do so, and again following the publication of the report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel in 2012; however, Johnson's apology was rejected by Margaret Aspinall, chairperson of the Hillsborough Families Support Group, whose son James, 18, died in the