Editor returns to Earth for job with the BBC

LONDON - Elvis, Lord Lucan and numerous alien visitors can rest easy.

Tony Livesey, the editor-in-chief and managing director of the Daily Sport and Sunday Sport newspapers is to end his 18-year association with Britain's most outrageous publishing company.

Livesey, who started at the Sunday Sport as a sports reporter in 1987, just a year after it launched, has decided to concentrate on a new career in television and radio with the BBC.

He is to join the corporation as a TV sports reporter for the BBC TV's regional flagship news programme, North West Tonight, and has plans to work on other TV projects for the BBC.

"I've always wanted to be a television presenter," said Livesey, already a presenter on BBC Radio Lancashire's breakfast show. He also recently completed a five-part Channel 4 series called Seaside Secrets, which he wrote and presented.

"I've been here 18 years," he said. "I started as a sports reporter in 1987 and I've done every job you can imagine since. I've toyed with TV for years and juggled the work, but I've decided now that I want to go into TV and radio."

During his time with newspapers, which are owned by millionaire publisher David Sullivan who made his fortune with pornographic magazines and sex shops, Livesey helped shape and maintain their character.

The Sunday Sport is infamous around the world as a near parody of the excess of tabloid journalism.

Headlines such as "Hitler Was A Woman", "Aliens Turned Our Son Into A Fish Finger" and "Donkey Robs Bank" have helped keep the paper on the newsstands.

Some of its more lurid stories have included a 62-stone German porn star.

Other stories stretching the truth were on a double-decker London bus found frozen in the Antarctic ice, a World War II bomber found on the Moon, a statue of Elvis found on Mars, Lord Lucan riding Shergar and countless alien abductions.

And his proudest moment?

"One of my other proudest moments was when I didn't quite believe the story 'Aliens Turned Our Son Into A Fish Finger' so I told the reporter to go to Asda buy a packet of fish fingers, mix the child in with them and see if the mother could pick it out."

- INDEPENDENT