Ian Hislop: 'Marr injunction was pretty rank'

Ian Hislop has said that it was "pretty rank" of Andrew Marr to get a super-injunction given his position as an active journalist.

BBC broadcaster Marr today revealed that he had secured a High Court Injunction in 2008 banning the press from revealing he had an affair in 2003. As a so-called 'super-injunction', the order also banned the press from revealing the fact that an injunction had been secured.

Hislop - who as editor of Private Eye challenged the order - told BBC Radio's Today programme: "I thought that this was a touch hypocritical since he'd written a piece specifically about privacy law in which he said that judges should not determine privacy law, it should be determined by parliament. Therefore he had just done the opposite of what he believed.

"As a journalist he said, 'I did not come into journalism to gag journalists'. That's exactly what he did, so I challenged it, and I said to him and his lawyers, 'This is outrageous'."

When it was suggested that Marr had secured the injunction for the benefit of the woman involved and the child she had, Hislop replied: "And more importantly you might argue, his own career and the embarrassment that he would face.

"All of these things have to be taken into account, and as a leading BBC interviewer who's asking politicians about failures of judgement, failures in their private lives and inconsistencies, it was pretty rank of him to have an injunction when acting as an active journalist.

"I think he knows that and I'm very pleased that he's actually come forward and said that I can no longer do this."

Asked if he would continue to challenge such injunctions, Hislop said: "A lot of them as I've said are largely about slappers and footballers and they make a difficult case for responsible journalism.

"In his case it seemed absolutely on the nose that here was a case that was quite important and should be challenged, so I wasted the money challenging it."

> Imogen Thomas footballer injunction upheld