Kelvin MacKenzie

[5] He joined the South East London Mercury at 17 and, for the next ten years, worked on local and then national newspapers, including the Daily Express.

MacKenzie cemented the paper's image as a right-wing tabloid, not only increasing its profile, but also making it known for attacks on left-wing political figures and movements, and its sensationalist front-page celebrity exposés.

"[6] MacKenzie was responsible for the "Gotcha" front-page headline of 4 May 1982, which reported the contentious sinking of the Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano by a British submarine during the Falklands War.

The claims made in the accompanying article, that the comedian Freddie Starr had placed his girlfriend's hamster on a sandwich and ate it, turned out to be entirely untrue and was an invention of the publicist Max Clifford.

[8] At one point, MacKenzie prepared a front page with the headline "Mine Führer" and a photograph of Scargill with his arm in the air, a pose giving the appearance of him making a Nazi salute.

According to MacKenzie, following the UK's forced exit from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism on Black Wednesday in September 1992, Major telephoned him to ask how the paper would report the story.

While Major has denied the conversation ever took place,[16] MacKenzie has said his response was: "Prime Minister, I have on my desk in front of me a very large bucket of shit which I am just about to pour all over you.

"[17] In January 1987, MacKenzie published a completely untrue front-page story alleging that pop singer Elton John had engaged in sex with underage rentboys.

Shortly afterwards, MacKenzie published another entirely false allegation that the singer had had the voice boxes of his guard dogs removed because their barking kept him awake at night.

Shortly after publication, MacKenzie confirmed the inaccuracy of that story by sending a reporter to the singer's house, who quickly discovered that all of Elton John's guard dogs were quite capable of barking.

"[21] Some other controversies during MacKenzie's editorship include a headline describing Australian Aborigines as "The Abo's: Brutal and Treacherous", which was condemned as "inaccurate" and "unacceptably racist" by the Press Council,[8] and MacKenzie's sending of photographers to break into a psychiatric hospital to ask actor Jeremy Brett, who was a patient there at the time, and who was suffering from manic depression and dying of cardiomyopathy, whether he was "dying of AIDS".

[22] Those incidents led to considerable criticism of The Sun, but the newspaper's profile increased dramatically during MacKenzie's time as editor, although sales figures dipped.

[24][25] The next day, The Sun had the front-page headline, "The Truth", and accused Liverpool fans of theft, and of urinating on and attacking police officers and emergency services.

[27][28] The article was accompanied by graphic photographs showing Liverpool fans, including young children, choking and suffocating as they were being crushed against the perimeter fences surrounding the terraces – this was widely condemned as inappropriate.

[29] It has since emerged that many British national newspaper editors were offered the same story from the same sources the day before The Sun article was published but, while many national newspapers printed allegations about Liverpool fans being responsible for the disaster, only MacKenzie and his counterpart at the Daily Star were prepared to print the more outlandish allegations about theft and the abuse of dead bodies, with many editors feeling that the claims sounded dubious.

[citation needed] For his part, Murdoch ordered MacKenzie to appear on BBC Radio 4's The World This Weekend in the aftermath of the controversy to apologise.

In 1995, MacKenzie joined Mirror Group Newspapers and was appointed joint boss of its fledgling L!VE TV British cable television channel.

MacKenzie later said that he would agree to indulge in a "night of passion" with Janet Street-Porter and that he would be "willing", but only if she paid him £4.7m, a figure he had arrived at after calculating how much money he would lose from "loss of reputation, the negative impact on future earnings etc".

[citation needed] L!VE TV had a budget of only £2,000 an hour and attracted a small audience, with an average of 200,000 viewers, but became well known because of the controversy and criticism surrounding its programming.

He made his debut on the station over the summer, presenting a series of programmes telling the story of various scandals which have occurred at FIFA World Cup tournaments over the years.

"[56] During an after-dinner speech to Newcastle-based law firm Mincoffs Solicitors on 30 November 2006, MacKenzie is reported to have said of his coverage of the Hillsborough disaster:[57] All I did wrong there was tell the truth.

[citation needed] Although there was actually little reaction to the quotes on Merseyside at the time, they did draw comment from Phil Hammond, chairman of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, who said: "I can't believe that even after all these years, there is no remorse or regret for the hurt he caused".

at this point however that, although MacKenzie appeared not to regret the coverage, he no longer regarded it as having any factual basis after his apparent admissions in the past that the allegations made were lies fed to him by police officers and a Conservative MP.

In February 2007, Independent journalist Matthew Norman claimed that MacKenzie was considering issuing a public apology for his coverage of the Hillsborough disaster, although at the time he was "still unsure" as to whether to do so.

As the Prime Minister has made clear these allegations were wholly untrue and were part of a concerted plot by police officers to discredit the supporters thereby shifting the blame for the tragedy from themselves.

[70] A month after the column appeared, it was announced that MacKenzie's "contract with News Group Newspapers", the Sun's publishers, "has been terminated by mutual consent".

[73] In July 2006, MacKenzie wrote a column for The Sun referring to Scots as "Tartan Tosspots" and apparently rejoicing in the fact that Scotland has a lower life expectancy than the rest of the United Kingdom.

[74]The comments came as part of criticism of prime minister Gordon Brown, whom MacKenzie said could not be trusted to manage the British economy because he was "a socialist Scot",[75] and stating that this was relevant to the debate.

Fellow panellist Chuka Umunna from the think tank Compass called his comments "absolutely disgraceful", and booing and jeering were heard from the Cheltenham studio audience.

In the late 1990s, MacKenzie was featured in The Mail on Sunday, holidaying in what the paper described as a "love nest" in Barbados with News International secretary Joanna Duckworth.