Andrew Marr very sorry for that ‘awful’ photo

So who was that woman with Andrew Marr in Soho? In tomorrow’s Spectator, he reveals all. Blaming ‘utter exhaustion’ from completing his new History of the World series after ‘two years, about two dozen countries, a blur and daze of airports, and hundreds of thousands of words’, Marr said he was celebrating ‘no doubt excessively’ when he ‘embraced a colleague too enthusiastically and was snapped – or papped – or whatever.’

Leaving his family home with a suitcase on the day the Sunday Mirror ran the pics was not the greatest PR move, but Marr tells this week’s magazine that he was off to the States rather than being booted out. ‘Although the US trip was interesting, it would have been rather more fun had I not been banging my head against every wall I passed, moaning ‘fool, fool, fool’. The symptoms of remorse, it turns out, are very much like flu.’

The former editor does not blame the press, but concedes: ‘The pictures looked awful. All my own fault. I’ve since being going about apologising, not least to my wife, for embarrassing all and sundry.’ His series he was shooting starts on Sunday – at the same time as Downton Abbey. Mr Steerpike wonders which channel Mrs Marr will be tuning in to.