{"id":629331,"date":"2026-06-09T14:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T14:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/629331\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T14:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T14:34:09","slug":"tony-livesey-to-step-back-from-bbc-radio-show-after-issues-raised-by-panorama-bbc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/629331\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Livesey to \u2018step back\u2019 from BBC radio show after issues raised by Panorama | BBC"},"content":{"rendered":"

The BBC presenter Tony Livesey is to \u201cstep back\u201d from his radio show after allegations were raised about his previous career as the editor-in-chief of David Sullivan\u2019s Sport Newspapers.<\/p>\n

The BBC said Livesey, 62, would be stepping away from presenting his late-night 5 Live show for \u201ca short time\u201d while the corporation considers the issues raised by a Panorama investigation<\/a>, which accused Sullivan, a billionaire and co-owner of West Ham United<\/a>, of sexually exploitative and predatory behaviour against women over several decades.<\/p>\n

Sullivan has denied the allegations<\/a>, stating through his lawyers: \u201cI categorically deny all of these complaints.\u201d<\/p>\n

The investigation<\/a> also aired questions for Livesey, with one alleged victim stating that he had arranged a meeting between her and Sullivan.<\/p>\n

Livesey told the Times he had \u201cno recollection\u201d of introducing the young woman to Sullivan and that it was \u201cnot part\u201d of his job to do so. He said that he had had \u201cpractically zero\u201d contact with anyone appearing in the paper, such as female models.<\/p>\n

The BBC<\/a> also pointed to a passage in Livesey\u2019s 1998 book saying that he and Sullivan had devised the idea for the \u201ccountdown to 16\u201d feature, which featured countdowns to models\u2019 16th birthdays, when they could be pictured topless legally for the first time.<\/p>\n

Livesey has since said the feature was \u201ccategorically\u201d not his idea and that large parts of his book were \u201cfictionalised\u201d to make it appear he was \u201cat the centre of all stories\u201d, even if he had not been.<\/p>\n

A BBC spokesperson said: \u201cThe Panorama investigation<\/a> 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The BBC presenter Tony Livesey is to \u201cstep back\u201d from his radio show after allegations were raised about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-629331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}