Presenter Tony Livesey has left BBC Radio 5 Live after 16 years at the station, the corporation has announced.<\/p>\n
Livesey stepped back from his weekday late night talk show last month following allegations made against his former newspaper boss David Sullivan.<\/p>\n
He had previously worked as editor-in-chief of Sullivan’s Daily and Sunday Sport publications.<\/p>\n
Several women have accused Sullivan, a billionaire businessman and West Ham co-owner, of abusing his power and preying on them for sex, in some cases when they were teenagers. Sullivan has strongly denied the allegations.<\/p>\n
The claims against Sullivan were made in a joint investigation by the Times and BBC Panorama.<\/p>\n
The BBC previously said Livesey had asked to take a break from presenting his programme while the issues raised by the investigation were being examined.<\/p>\n
One alleged victim said that Livesey had arranged a meeting between her and Sullivan in 1999.<\/p>\n
Livesey said he had “no recollection” of introducing the young woman to Sullivan and that it was “not part” of his job to do so.<\/p>\n
He added that 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”.<\/p>\n
In an email sent to 5 Live staff on Monday morning, the station’s controller Heidi Dawson said he had now decided to leave.<\/p>\n
“Tony has asked me to pass on his heartfelt thanks to the brilliant colleagues at 5 Live who he has had the pleasure of working with over the years.<\/p>\n
“I know many of you have also really enjoyed working with Tony, and we wish him well for all his future endeavours.”<\/p>\n
The presenter worked for the BBC from 2006, the year he left the newspaper, appearing on 5 Live from 2010 onwards including helming its drivetime show.<\/p>\n
He won radio awards – ARIA and APAs – for his reporting on how it feels to lose your mother as a child, and an ARIAS Gold award after he was asked by the late Dame Deborah James to conduct her final interview.<\/p>\n
His topical three-hour programme was broadcast on 5 Live from Monday to Thursday, featuring interviews and phone calls from listeners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Presenter Tony Livesey has left BBC Radio 5 Live after 16 years at the station, the corporation has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":726043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-726042","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\/726042","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=726042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/726043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}