Andrew Marr reveals gagging order

Andrew Marr has revealed that he took out a court injunction to stop the press reporting details of his private life.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, the BBC broadcaster said that he was going public because he no longer needed the gagging order.

Marr, who has three children with wife Jackie Ashley, secured the High Court injunction in January 2008. The order prevented the press from printing stories about an affair that he had with another unnamed journalist, which ended in 2003.

He said: "The injunction allowed me and my family the time and space needed to repair and heal itself at a very difficult time.

"None of this has been particularly pleasant, nor am I proud of it, but we are still together as a family and I am delighted about that."

Marr added that injunctions "shouldn't be for ever", but asserted that there is "a case for privacy in a limited number of difficult situations".

The Britain From Above presenter believed that he had fathered a daughter with his former lover, but the paper reports that he later discovered he was not the child's father via a DNA test.

Marr admitted that he was "embarrassed" and "uneasy" about the course of action he had taken, but argued that he thought he had done the right thing.

"I did not come into journalism to go around gagging journalists," he said, "but at the time there was a crisis in my marriage and I believed there was a young child involved.

"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 [publication]."

Marr conceded that gagging orders are "controversial" and commented that the current situation "seems to be running out of control". Injunctions have been granted to a Premier League footballer, a married TV personality and a "world famous" actor in the past month.