reading a specific column from file

[cesco]

Hi,

I have a file containing four columns of data separated by tabs (\t)
and I'd like to read a specific column from it (say the third). Is
there any simple way to do this in Python?

I've found quite interesting the linecache module but unfortunately
that is (to my knowledge) only working on lines, not columns.

Any suggestion?

Thanks and regards
Francesco