He went to St Georges Junior School Vaughan Street, Nelson, Lancashire. His mother died, age 42, when he was only 13 years old.

Newspapers

He started out with the Nelson Leader and then worked in the Middle East with Sam Sloan at the Gulf News in Dubai. Returning to his native Lancashire, he worked at the Lancashire Evening Telegraph before spending 18 years with Sport Newspapers at which he was editor-in-chief and managing director of the Daily Sport and Sunday Sport newspapers, in the United Kingdom.

Radio and television

After resigning in August 2006, he joined the BBC, presenting the breakfast show on BBC Radio Lancashire, where his daily podcast was the BBC's most popular for regional radio, until joining 5 Live in January 2010 where he currently presents the late night discussion show from the BBC's Manchester studios. At the time of this move, it was announced he would continue to host a weekend show on BBC Lancashire, though this has yet to transpire. In 2004 he appeared as the moderator in the BBC2 game show "Traitor", although his name did not appear in the opening credits. He is also the sports reporter for regional TV news progamme BBC North West Tonight, and additionally covers for regular news anchor Gordon Burns in his absence, as well as presenting the North West edition of the BBC's regional football show Late Kick Off. A staunch supporter of Burnley F.C., Livesey is a regular pundit on BBC1's Inside Sport alongside Gabby Logan as well as appearances on Have I Got News For You, What The Papers Say and Never Mind The Buzzcocks, all on the BBC, and Gladiators on ITV. He also occasionally presented the Breakfast programme on 5 Live.

Livesey presented the one-off documentary Crumpet: A Very British Sex Symbol, which was transmitted on BBC2 on 28 December 2005 and a year later he presented another programme related to this called Beefcake: A Very British Sex Symbol, which too was transmitted on BBC2 on 27 December 2006.

On 11 January 2010, Tony started presenting a new late night show on Five Live. The show is a mixture of news, sport, discussion and entertainment. He took over from Richard Bacon, who moved to the afternoon show following Simon Mayo's departure to BBC Radio 2. Livesey's show was the first of the station's London-based programmes to move up north prior to the whole station moving to BBC North's state-of-the-art broadcasting space at Salford Quays in 2011.

He now lives in Colne, Lancashire. He has a wife and one son and daughter.