In a judgement yesterday by the bureau which determined the cheeky advert was degrading to women, it appears the joke is on Tamworth.

"It was actually the crease of my elbow," the billboards male designer Marlon Dalton said yesterday.

"It's amazing what you can do in Photoshop these days."

The Leader reported on the controversy surrounding the Centrepoint billboard featuring a pair of women's breasts with the tagline "Double the Fun" in January with some businesses and residents declaring the billboard sexist and a throwback to 1970s advertising.

One Tamworth business took the matter further, making an official complaint to the Advertising Standards Bureau, whose verdict has just come in.

The bureau found the billboard to have breached section 2.2 of the Advertiser Code of Ethics by objectifying women in an exploitative and degrading manner, but said the advertisement had not breached two other sections of the code.

In response, Centrepoint was forced to out the billboard's well-kept secret, that the female bust displayed was actually a result of the designer's airbushing skills.

Mr Dalton said although he "put the word out on the street", he knew he would have some moral issues sourcing a suitable model in Tamworth.

"You need someone fairly young for that kind of image and for someone my age to go approaching young girls, well we decided to go another route," he said.

Using an image he had taken himself of the crease of his closed elbow, he said it was a simple matter to airbrush in a cleavage shadow and side panels.

He said a number of people had approached him believing they knew the origins of the model, but he smiled and kept his secret, until now.

"Small town gossip," he said.

Saying the advertisement had achieved it's objective by igniting debate within the community, he was not concerned if Tamworth Regional Council ruled the billboard should come down.

"It had a limited life expectancy anyway."

"Bland is boring."