The sheer scale of BBC presenter Tony Livesey's lurid past as editor of the notorious Sunday Sport has been 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 his early evening show after being named in a BBC Panorama investigation into the tabloid'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 1998 book - Babes, Booze, Orgies and Aliens - that will now also prove hard to ignore for the corporation.
The memoir, 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 BBC'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 the 'stunning schoolgirl' could legally be shown topless when she turned 16 - 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 (…
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