BBC presenter Andrew Marr revealed today he had taken out a super-injunction to protect his family’s privacy.
In an interview with the Daily Mail, Mr Marr - married with three children - said he felt "uneasy" about the High Court injunction, which he won in January 2008 to suppress reports of an extra-marital affair.
“I did not come into journalism to go around gagging journalists,” he told the newspaper.
“Am I embarrassed by it? Yes. Am I uneasy about it? Yes.” But he added: “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 public interest in it.” But he said the use of injunctions now seemed to be “running out of control”.
“There is a case for privacy in a limited number of difficult situations, but then you have to move on. They shouldn’t be forever and a proper sense of proportion is required,” he said.
Private Eye editor Ian Hislop has accused Marr of hypocrisy after he admitted taking out the controversial super-injunction while working as a journalist.
Mr Hislop, who has been fighting the so-called gagging order and challenged the injunction only last week, condemned the suppression of reporting as “a touch hypocritical” today.
“As a leading BBC interviewer who is asking politicians about failures in judgment, failures in their private lives, inconsistencies, it was pretty rank of him to have an injunction while working as an active journalist,” he said.
“I think he knows that, and I’m very pleased he’s come forward and said ‘I can no longer do this’.” Mr Marr, he said, had written an article saying that parliament - not judges - should determine privacy law.
The injunction is one of a series of court orders granted by judges in recent years as individuals resort to the law to protect their privacy.
Marr's comments come amid a growing disquiet at the use by celebrities of injunctions and so-called super-injunctions to prevent media reporting of their private lives.
Last week British prime minister David Cameron sounded a warning about the way judges are creating a new law of privacy “rather than parliament”.
“The judges are creating a sort of privacy law whereas what ought to happen in a parliamentary democracy is parliament, which you elect and put there, should decide how much protection do we want for individuals and how much freedom of the press and the rest of it,” he said.
“So I am a little uneasy about what is happening.” Mr Cameron's remarks came after High Court judge Mr Justice Eady issued what was thought to be the first order permanently blocking publication of material relating to an individual’s private life.
In another High Court hearing, a married Premier League footballer who reportedly had an affair with Big Brother's Imogen Thomas won the right to maintain his anonymity.
PA