Andrew Marr comes clean about superinjunction

updated on 05 May 2011

As criticism grows over celebrities' use of superinjunctions to prevent the media reporting on aspects of their private lives, BBC presenter Andrew Marr has revealed he took one out in 2008 to supress news of an extramarital affair. According to the Daily Mail, Marr admitted to feeling "uneasy" and "embarrassed" about the superinjunction he took out to protect his family's privacy, and confirmed that he would no longer seek to suppress the story.

He told the Daily Mail: "I did not come into journalism to go around gagging journalists. Am I embarrassed by it? Yes. Am I uneasy about it? Yes. [But] I also had my own family to think about, and I believed this story was nobody else's business. I still believe there was, under those circumstances, no legitimate public interest in it."

He also said that the use of superinjunctions appeared to be "running out of control" and that although there was a case for their use in a limited number of cases, "they shouldn't be forever and a proper sense of proportion is required."