Revealed: Shocking extent of Tony Livesey's vile bragging about notorious Daily Sport stunts before his transformation into BBC star

Published: 01:15, 15 June 2026 | Updated: 01:15, 15 June 2026 The sheer scale of star BBC presenter Tony Livesey's lurid past as the editor of the notorious Sunday Sport is revealed in a long-forgotten memoir unearthed by the Daily Mail. The Radio 5 Live presenter, one of the corporation's most familiar voices, has 'stepped back' from fronting the early evening show after being named in a BBC Panorama investigation into the newspaper's billionaire co-founder David Sullivan. Livesey, 62, was accused in the programme of having helped to arrange a meeting between an aspiring glamour model and Sullivan while he was editor of the Daily and Sunday Sport. The woman claims Sullivan then forced her to have sex in order to obtain work as a model on the papers. The BBC has said it is 'considering the matters raised' by the documentary, while Livesey firmly denies any wrongdoing. However, it is his own 1998 book - Babes, Booze, Orgies and Aliens - that will now also prove hard to ignore for the corporation. The memoir, written about his years in Sullivan's tabloid empire, reads today as a toxic time capsule that is jaw-droppingly out-of-kilter with the values the BBC claims to uphold. Among the most troubling episodes recounted is the notorious 'Countdown to 16' stunt involving glamour model Linsey Dawn McKenzie. Tony Livesey (pictured), one of the corporation's most familiar voices, has 'stepped back' from presenting Radio 5 Live after being named in a BBC Panorama investigation into the newspaper's billionaire co-founder David Sullivan Livesey, 62, was accused in the programme of having helped to arrange a meeting between an aspiring glamour model and Sullivan (pictured) while he was editor of the Daily and Sunday Sport. The woman claims Sullivan forced her to have sex to obtain work as a model on the papers However, it is his own 1998 book - Babes, Booze, Orgies and Aliens - that will now also prove hard to ignore for the corporation. Pictured: Livesey launching the book in 1998  The gimmick ticked down the days until 'stunning schoolgirl' could legally be shown topless on her birthday milestone - then the legal minimum age for such publication. Livesey wrote in the book that McKenzie was 'fifteen, fresh out of school in Croydon' and wanted to become a Page Three star. 'Was Livesey interested? Er, yes. Just a bit,' he recalled in the third person of Linsey, who 'boasted a voluptuous 48FF figure'. He described how he and Sullivan 'hatched a plan' for a six-week countdown to Linsey's first topless appearance, claiming that 'a mood of hysteria' developed as the 'DD-Day approached'. 'Finally, following weeks of suspense and under the headline HAPPY BARE-THDAY, Linsey joyously unclipped her bra. 'The size of her breasts was impressive and matched only by the whopping eight per cent increase in sales for the souvenir edition printed in her honour.' Livesey has since said that having a model appear in the paper at 16 was 'categorically' not his idea. He has also said large parts of the book were fictionalised to place him 'at the centre of all stories' even when he was not. The memoir was not easy to trace; we had to go to a regional branch of the British Library to obtain a copy as it's no longer in print, not available digitally and not listed anywhere available secondhand. In it Livesey told how he was 'well aware that he needed something drastic to maintain the interest of his new readers' and 'jubilant' over the subsequent sales boost. Livesey spent 18 years at the Sport titles after joining as a sports reporter in 1987 and later becoming editor-in-chief in the mid-1990s. In its pomp, the company was said to be worth around £150million - built on formula of topless models, crude sex stories, spoof headlines and outrageous publicity drives. For Livesey, the 'hilarious and truly explosive' book may have seemed humorous at the time. Nearly three decades later, it could prove devastating to his employment as a mainstream BBC broadcaster. One headline in the late 1990s ran: 'Porn stars aged 16 - shock photos, shock truth'. Another read: 'Girl, 16, will lose her virginity in the Sunday Sport this Sunday.' The 128-page book reads as a boastful and cringeworthy victory lap for Livesey who crows how he 'shattered records' by packing the paper with sensational material, including lurid images of teenage porn stars and amateur orgies. One section claims he introduced an 'official nipple count' when sales were sliding, insisting that the number 'never fell below 65'. Livesey wrote in the third person of his appointment as editor: 'He was determined not to be browbeaten by gutless, politically correct p***s who preyed on Sunday Sport as though it was the devil's spawn. The memoir, written about his years in Sullivan's tabloid empire, reads today as a toxic time capsule that is jaw-droppingly out-of-kilter with the values the BBC claims to uphold. Pictured: Livesey at the book's launch in 1998  Among the most troubling episodes recounted is the notorious 'Countdown to 16' stunt involving glamour model Linsey Dawn McKenzie (pictured) 'As far as he was concerned, the current talk about "New Men" was b******s. 'The only New Man his readers ought to be interested in was Nanette Newman because she was worth a s*** and, according to her ads on TV, did the washing-up.' BBC bosses, already bruised by a string of crises involving high-profile presenters including Scott Mills and Huw Edwards, will find the resurfacing of the book to uncomfortable and embarrassing. One extraordinary section tells the story of a plus-size model nicknamed 'Gert Bucket', with Livesey pictured smiling beside her naked body. In grotesque terms, he goes on to describe the woman as 'a wobbling, mountainous 69-stone lump of quivering flesh' and says he bought 15 boxes of pickled-onion crisps in case she 'wanted a snack on the journey to London'. The book then recounts a row after the model allegedly refused to remove her underwear for the shoot. According to the memoir, Livesey rang the office in panic, saying: 'She won't take her knickers off.' 'It had cost almost £10,000 in travel fees and hotel bills to bring Gert to Britain. Now, if she refused to get her kit off and show readers the mounds of flesh that swam in her pants like chip fat, all that cash, Sullivan's cash, was wasted.' Livesey said that after being persuaded to strip by Sullivan, sales 'soared instantly by 80,000': 'The huge, happy mountain of lard captured the imagination of hundreds of thousands of readers.' In another grim episode, the book tells of a 40-stone woman nicknamed 'Linda Lump', who allegedly claimed she needed to consume 2,000 calories during sex. The memoir claims a teenage staffer was 'volunteered' to test the claim, refused, and was then sacked - before readers were invited to vote on his fate under a homophobic headline. There is also a macabre passage in which Livesey is said to have dreamed up a twist on the classic 'Spot the Ball' competition. The proposed feature, called 'Spot the Head', was based on a photograph of an execution in the Middle East in which a condemned man had been beheaded with a curved sword. The book says Livesey suggested airbrushing out the severed head and inviting readers to guess where it had gone. Other passages are no less startling. When 'fat feminist comedian' Jo Brand mocked the Sunday Sport on Channel 4, Livesey said he retaliated by running a crude competition targeting her - with a particularly cruel and crude headline. He described how he and Sullivan (pictured together, in archival footage shown in the Panorama documentary) 'hatched a plan' for a six-week countdown to Linsey's first topless appearance, claiming that 'a mood of hysteria' developed as the 'DD-Day approached' For Livesey (pictured, in archival footage shown in the Panorama documentary), the 'hilarious and truly explosive' book may have seemed humorous at the time. Nearly three decades later, it could prove devastating to his employment as a mainstream BBC broadcaster 'As a reward for his efforts, Livesey was promoted and given control of the daily paper too,' the book says. 'On the first day on the Daily Sport he arranged for page-three blonde Louise Hodges to run naked around the office as a bonus for his loyal journalists. 'Unable to offer instant pay rises for staff, Livesey nevertheless provided another perk by employing page-three girls wearing nothing but G strings to work one day a month on the reception desk.' The memoir also paints a picture of a close working relationship between Livesey and Sullivan, who spoke up to 15 times a day. Together, the book says, they battled campaigners who wanted to end topless Page Three pictures. Livesey wrote in 1998: 'Sullivan, who survived a triple-heart-bypass operation in 1994, remains dedicated to his pride and joy paper. 'After having a baby son, also called David, with his girlfriend Eve, Sullivan maintains that the papers still mean everything to him. 'He spends hours each day working on, and thinking about, the Sport. He and Livesey talk up to fifteen times a day via a red telephone hotline installed next to the editor-in-chief's computer console. 'Together the pair have battled through years of adversity. Throughout the early nineties, newspapers that featured photographs of topless women were vilified by misguided women's groups and their sympathisers. 'Campaigners, including the Labour Party's Clare Short, did their utmost to ban page-three girls and some newspapers, including the Mirror, the Sun and the News of the World, have since bowed to that pressure and ceased to print topless photographs. 'Perhaps these shortsighted people would be happier for page-three girls to abandon careers that can earn them up to £1,000 a day and sell cigarettes instead?' He described Sport Newspapers as the only Fleet Street outlet 'brave enough' to stand against what he called the tide of 'right-onism that has threatened to engulf the views of ordinary people'. 'As the decade wears on, the pointlessness of such retarded Victorian ideals has become more apparent,' he said. 'Millions of women go topless on holiday each year. Why should men be afraid to admit that they find such sights attractive?' Livesey left Sport Newspapers in 2006 to join the BBC as a sports journalist. He began working on Radio 5 Live in 2010 and went on to become one of the station's best-known presenters. But his past has returned to haunt him following the Panorama investigation into Sullivan. Livesey (pictured, presenting Radio 5 Live) left Sport Newspapers in 2006 to join the BBC as a sports journalist. He began working on Radio 5 Live in 2010 and went on to become one of the station's best-known presenters The woman in the programme, whose name was changed to Florence, claimed that a meeting she believed would be a professional casting and job interview was arranged only after she met Livesey in the Daily Sport newsroom. She alleged that Livesey telephoned Sullivan and set up the appointment in 1999. Florence told Panorama: 'He [Tony Livesey] picked up his phone on this messy desk and called Sullivan. He went: "Have you got your diary there... can you do this date?" I was like: "I can do that date." He then said: "Write it in - you're going to see David Sullivan."' Eight days later, she went to Sullivan's mansion in Theydon Bois, Essex, where she claims he told her she could become one of his 'regular girls' in his newspapers and magazines if they had sex. She alleged that Sullivan then manoeuvred her into a bedroom, forced himself on her and 'took away her innocence'. 'I'm 99.9 per cent sure I said: "I don't want to." It was almost like a transaction... That's how it felt,' she told Panorama. Sullivan vehemently denies the claims against him. Through his lawyers, he has said the layout of his house makes Florence's account 'implausible'. Livesey told Panorama he has 'no recollection' of the alleged incident described by Florence and said arranging such meetings was 'not part' of his job. He said he had 'great sympathy for a woman who may have become a victim' but rejected any suggestion that he had played 'any role whatsoever in that scenario' and said he found the allegation 'abhorrent'. A BBC spokesman said: 'The Panorama investigation included allegations about Tony Livesey which we take seriously. We also note Tony has firmly denied the allegations. 'He has asked to step back from presenting his radio show for a short period and we will be considering the matters raised by the programme. We will not be commenting further at this stage.' The minimum age someone could be published nude was raised to the age of 18 in 2004. Sullivan, now 77, has been accused of preying on a string of women, some in their teens, during his time as a newspaper chief. Sources who worked in the industry at the time reportedly said Sullivan's nickname was 'B**w Job or No Job', due to his reputation for expecting sexual favours in exchange for access to the vast opportunities he could offer aspiring models. Livesey's book details when the Sport's founding editor Mike Gabbert met Sullivan for the first time at at his Essex residence in 1986. He said Sullivan was 'dressed casually in a t-shirt bearing the blurred logo: "Too much sex makes your eyes go funny".' Livesey added: 'The living room was flanked on one side by a swimming pool, constantly heated to 81 degrees, and had a stunning dining room on the other side that could comfortably seat twelve guests. 'Covering many of the walls were a series of large mirrors and startling pictures of women in various states of undress.' Burnley-born Livesey joined Sport Newspapers as a sports reporter in 1987 after a spell working as a journalist at the Gulf News in Dubai. He quickly climbed the ladder at the paper, taking on a string of senior roles including sports editor, deputy editor, editor and, eventually, editor-in-chief. In 2006, he made the switch to the BBC, first cutting his teeth as a sports reporter and breakfast show host on Radio Lancashire. Livesey later moved in front of the cameras on regional news programme North West Tonight before switching to Five Live in 2010. There, he became a familiar voice to listeners, presenting late-night shows, breakfast programmes and the weekday afternoon Drive slot. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? 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