Marring Your Reputation.
What curious fellows these journalists are! Andrew Marr spends thousands obtaining an injunction to prevent publication of the well known gossip that he fathered a child by a Times Journalist whilst still married to a Guardian journalist. Obviously a sensitive subject for a £600,000 a year BBC journalist.
He takes no notice of Guido breaking the story two years ago beyond opining that bloggers are “socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed, young men sitting in their mother’s basements and ranting” and their output is the “spewings and rantings of very drunk people late at night”.
He then declines to defend the injunction when he finds that Private Eye is about to publish another story on the subject, and breaks the injunction himself by flogging the sorry tale to the Daily Mail.
What could have changed since he thought that as a journalist it was perfectly reasonable for him to use the law to censor other journalists?
His original application for the injunction was on the grounds of protecting the child – his child, the product of worthy left leaning loins.
Then he discovered it wasn’t his child after all, and could have been fathered by God knows who – suddenly the ‘child’ was not worthy of his protection, in fact he doesn’t believe in super-injunctions any more, they make him feel ‘uneasy’, bracketing him along with sundry priapic footballers and other unsavoury characters. Besides – he has ‘talked it over with his wife’ and apparently come to the conclusion that the bastard child of his ex-mistress is not worth investing any more money in.
So you see readers, it is not ‘all children’ and ‘all family’ that must keep their reputation unmarred, their privacy un-invaded – just the ‘chosen ones’. This is not a matter of a law available only to the rich, Marr can still well afford to protect the child’s reputation and privacy – it is now a matter of genetics.
Nothing could have marred his reputation in my eyes more effectively than the knowledge that he believes in censorship – but only to protect the product of the ‘right’ loins.
I wonder, will he donate his fee from the Daily Mail, to the upbringing of the child he believes is no longer worthy of protection from intrusive publicity?
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April 26, 2011 at 10:19 -
I had previously formed the opinion that Mr Marr had “done the right” thing by abandoning his claim to an injunction and had gone up in my estimation. I shall now have to think again.
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April 26, 2011 at 10:25 -
Thinking further, is this not in way symbolic of the Westminster Bubble/guardianista/media bubble that is in so many ways, if I may use the term), incestuous?
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April 26, 2011 at 10:37 -
Indeed – and note it was Marr who sidled up to Gordon Brown in that sycophantic interview and declined to ask him a direct question on the issue of medication – a story which was broken here – by one of those ‘socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed, young men sitting in their mother’s basements and ranting” (that’s me, in case you didn’t recognise the description) – he has no objection to picking up stories from the Blogosphere. He is just a hypocrite.
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April 26, 2011 at 10:48 -
Note to self: do not annoy La Raccoon!
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April 26, 2011 at 14:07 -
Yes, he blew a perfect opportunity to ask GB about his medication (quite deliberately and after Mandy lent on him?). He’s a worthless, jug-eared, hypocritical, sycophantic, overpaid scumbag.
(I’m neither pimply nor bald, cauliflower-nosed or young, but the rest might be true.)
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April 26, 2011 at 10:48 -
Incestuous, eh? Good job they don’t have a local branch in Norfolk!
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April 26, 2011 at 13:35 -
I don’t care what he’s done as long as he loves his mum
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April 26, 2011 at 10:26 -
Alas for the poor child who has already been the subject of her mother’s journalism; courtesy of a (presumably expenses paid) holiday “review” in her newspaper.
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April 26, 2011 at 10:37 -
Mr. Marr is a credit to his (priapic, unprincipled, self-serving, hypocritical) profession. A career in politics – a safe Labour seat – is the inevitable outcome, n’est-ce pas?
O tempus, O mores…-
April 26, 2011 at 23:56 -
Oh surely not!
Andrew Marr is a fine, upstanding and selfless purveyor of the unvarnished truth to us plebs. He deserves a far grander role than the one you suggest, and it must have a humungous salary and benefits package. Maybe something like:
– Head of the Press Complaints Commission
– Chief exec of Ofcom
– Euro Commissioner for the Ministry of Truth
– Exalted High Lord Chamberlain and Panjandrum of All Written Communications
– Sole Arbiter of Decisions on the Privacy of Important and Marvelous Personages (S.A.D.- P.I.M.P.)
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April 26, 2011 at 11:14 -
I still cannot get over the information that Marr is paid £600,000 a year by the BBC.
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April 26, 2011 at 11:58 -
That’s only baseline salary for Marr on Sunday and Start the Week; all else is extra plus royalties from books – nearer £2 million.
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April 26, 2011 at 11:15 -
Mr. Marr was never my favourite journalist by his actions now he should crawl under the same stone his hero the Fifeshire Feartie resides under.
Perhaps we’ll see the headlines “The former journalist known as … ” because the jug-eared slug has no honour left now worth preserving. -
April 26, 2011 at 11:33 -
“and could have been fathered by God” – surely the wrong season for an immarrculate conception tale.
There once was a Fabian Marr
Dipped his hands in the public sweet jar
That’s not all he dipped
As the bloggers have quipped
And again the response is “Ha Ha”-
April 26, 2011 at 12:13 -
A jug-eared journo called Marr
Thought his mistress was better by far.
But it turned out that the sprog
Was a third-party job;
Seems she’d done more Miles than a car.-
April 26, 2011 at 12:29 -
Brilliant, there’s quite a few now that do limers, Gloria, MacHeath, Sister E, and your good self. Hopefully a few more will join in.
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April 26, 2011 at 12:34 -
It’s hard work, though, isn’t it?
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April 26, 2011 at 19:40 -
When they pay you to be analytical
On all matters party political,
An injunction to hide
Your own bit on the side
Might appear just a touch hypocritical.-
April 26, 2011 at 20:26 -
It is hard work, I find some days the inspiration just isn’t there.
Very good one as always from Mac. Can’t resist another one-Outer Party will get you a Zil
With taxpayers funding your thrills
It’s legalised theft
Which leaves most quite bereft
Lord Reith would be feeling quite ill
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April 26, 2011 at 11:49 -
When super-injunctions save my senses from being assaulted by news of ‘footballers and slappers’ (to use Hislop’s words), I feel a grain of gratefulness for their existence. However, this case, and the Trafigura case a few months ago, are somewhat different. The deliberate concealment of wrongdoing probably resulting in human fatalities in the Trafigura case, and the deliberate concealment of rank hypocricy in the Marr case show how public interest is best served by openness in the reporting of public affairs.
I’ve never had much time for Marr (he always sounds so full of his own self-satisfied importance), and for the life of me can’t think why he’s worth £600,000 a year of licence-fee payers’ money, but this has cast him to new lows in my estimation. I hope he paid his own legal bills, and that no BBC money was involved at any stage.
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April 26, 2011 at 17:48 -
Footballers & slappers?
As Quagmire in Family Guy, out of reach of super-injunctions, would say, “Giggeddy, giggeddy”
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April 26, 2011 at 12:14 -
The torrent of comment from “inadequate, pimpled and single”, and the “spewings and rantings of very drunk people late at night” notwithstanding, I wonder if Mr. Marr would comment upon that very pertinent point in Anna’s post; in that once the defenceless child was proven not to be his, it ceased to deserve the protection of the Court and the power of the injunction?
I am surprised that more people are not aware of the sayings of Chairman Andrew in regard to his liberal instincts
as quoted :-I firmly believe that repression can be a great, civilising instrument for good.
Stamp hard on certain ‘natural’ beliefs for long enough and you can almost kill them off…
A new Race Relations Act will impose the will of the state on millions of other lives too.”Ah yes, a true Liberal LeftWinger, with all the hidden charms of a Pol Pot, a Stalin or a better educated Kim Il-Sung!
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April 26, 2011 at 12:30 -
Sadly, not better looking that any of them, though…
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April 26, 2011 at 12:37 -
That goes a long way to explaining BBC practice, which seems to differ quite markedly from their stated principles.
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April 26, 2011 at 13:24 -
Quite, they seem quite put out by my refusal to send them £160 odd quid, to churn out labour party propoganda on a daily basis.
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April 26, 2011 at 13:39 -
A journalist named Andrew Marr
Had a fling with a girl in a bar
She got put up the junction
And he gained an injunction
His shoddiest action by far-
April 26, 2011 at 15:39 -
Whatever the tipple, I’ll have the same (there used to be a Braines brewery!)
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April 26, 2011 at 13:47 -
At least the progeny won’t have to grow up under the rumour of who its father might have been.
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April 27, 2011 at 00:13 -
… nor will the child have the shame of knowing that its absentee Dad is a smug, jug-eared, hypocritical, Stalinist journalist whose income was derived solely from a compulsory tax forced on the unwilling.
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April 26, 2011 at 13:49 -
It makes you wonder how on Earth he could be effective in his job as a reporter when he himself is involved in a conspiracy to hide the truth from other journalists.
What a hypocrite!
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April 26, 2011 at 13:57 -
What makes me wonder is what do TWO women see in him?
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April 26, 2011 at 14:41 -
“it is now a matter of genetics”
As is only natural. Genetic impulses are inborn and (ought to be) primary, all else is mere social convention.
Marr has acted like an arse in this case; beat him up for that, but not for following his genetic programming.
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April 26, 2011 at 15:12 -
May a Streisand Tsunami sweep the country clean of Marr and all his kind.
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April 26, 2011 at 15:43 -
Oh, I think Andrew Marr-vell has something to say about this …
Had we but cash enough, and time,
To print our names would be a crime;
Our lawyers would devise a way
To keep the media at bay.
Super-injunctions fit the bill
When we’ve embarrassments to kill.
For, Lady, you deserve a break
(And I’d be free to play the rake).But at my back I clearly hear
That bastard Hislop hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast ignominy.
Your reputation turned to dust;
Revealed to Ashley, all my lust.
The Beeb’s a fine and private place,
But Private Eye is on my case.So now, before our cover’s blown
Let’s claim the high ground for our own.
“I would not gag a fellow hack –
I wished to spare the lovely Jack !
Surely a man and family
May have a little privacy ?”
Thus, though we cannot thwart the Sun
We’ll still look out for Number One.-
April 26, 2011 at 18:19 -
April 26, 2011 at 18:32 -
Oooh that’s a bit classy, Well done our very own Captain Marvel[l]!
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April 26, 2011 at 15:56 -
Lovely people, these left-wing journalists.
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April 26, 2011 at 16:39 -
Ah yes….Andrew Marr. One law for the Guardianistas and the chittering classes. Truly contemptible behaviour. He must feel so at home at the BBC, just another fifthrate beeboid hack plying his threadbare trade. Pass the sickbag.
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April 26, 2011 at 18:18 -
Seems that Ms Miles must have been at the very least two-timing old Jug Ears, and possibly rather more. And since there was progeny which the hypocrite believed to have been his very own for several years of expensive support, and therefore was not using a condom, he’s lucky he didn’t get a nasty infection.
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April 26, 2011 at 20:12 -
We don’t know that he didn’t get a nasty infection, do we?
Jackie shot Andy a look that said
“Ha ha, Jug Ears, you made your bed”
Don’t get ideas, you can stay in the shed,
Gordon Brown gets me hot.”
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April 26, 2011 at 19:43 -
Is it passed the watershed time yet? An old Dean martin song –
“When the spunk gets a clunk from a speedier punk, that’s A-Marr-eh?”
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April 26, 2011 at 19:50 -
I think you have it wrong, Anna.
I feel that the simple reason for Marr going to the Daily Mail was that he couldn’t face the sheer financial expense of defending his position – even on his salary.
“I didn’t come into journalism to gag other journalists.” is just something he’s said to make himself look honourable.
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April 26, 2011 at 20:02 -
Some of the “jug-ears” insults here are a little bit juvenile, but he did start it, didn’t he? His comments on bloggers not his finest bit of reasoned creative writing.
And he really is a funny-looking bugger, it’s not just cheap generalisation! -
April 26, 2011 at 20:27 -
Umm, I’m no lawyer, but is this what the courts see as their raison d’etre? To preserve scoops for the Daily Mail? Can a person who takes out an injunction cast it aside so easily? Even if they can, is it still possible to do so if one of the protected parties (the child) has not (presumably) given their permission?
If not in law, then certainly in principle, Marr is in contempt of court.
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April 26, 2011 at 21:23 -
Apart from the injunction etc, I remember trying to watch his series about the history of the 20th century. I was always taught to be aware of unintentional bias by a historian, and forced bias when things were written under monarchs like the Tudors, but this was very crude left-wing propaganda. After about 5 mins I expected factory owners to be seen fingering their moustaches and tying damsels to railway lines with the appropriate piano music. He obviously didn’t care what went out in his name, and neither did the BBC.
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April 27, 2011 at 01:13 -
“unintentuional bias by a historian”
Nicely put – apart from the historian bit.
I wonder if he has ever even read a history book.-
April 27, 2011 at 06:19 -
Good point, it was billed as a serious documentary rather than a journalist’s personal view. I thought, probably naively, that he’d do his research with an objective mind, but we live and learn…
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April 27, 2011 at 01:08 -
“I did not come into journalism to go around gagging journalists”.
Well, at least, not for more than three years.
Just another BBC common purpose shill – do as I say, not as I do.
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April 27, 2011 at 10:01 -
The way I see it, if this tale centred on a Politician there would now be calls all over the media questioning his judgement and calling for his resignation, and especially I suspect from the Daily Mail.
How interesting that the same standards are (apparently) not applied to journalists.
Even if the version of events which has unfolded is true, I think that Marr will survive intact, although this grubby little tale reflects poorly on him and will be on his CV for ever now.
Congratulations to Private Eye for fighting the injunction.
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