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Andrew Marr (born 31 July 1959, Glasgow, Scotland) is a Scottish journalist and political commentator. He edited The Independent for two years, until May 1998, and was the political editor for the BBC from 2000 until 2005. He then began hosting a political programme called The Andrew Marr Show (previously Sunday AM) on Sunday mornings on BBC One from September 2005 onwards. In May 2007 he began a new political history series on BBC Two, Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain.

Early life

Andrew Marr was born and educated in Scotland at the High School of Dundee, Craigflower School and at Loretto, an independent boys' school in Musselburgh, East Lothian. He went on to study English at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.

He was once a member of the socialist group Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory and reportedly a seller of its newspaper Socialist Organiser while at Cambridge, where he acquired the sobriquet of 'Red Andy'.

Newspaper career

Marr joined The Scotsman as a junior business reporter in 1981, going on to become a parliamentary correspondent in 1984 and then a political correspondent in 1986. During this period, Marr met the political journalist Tony Bevins, who was to become a mentor and close friend, and was responsible for Marr's first appointment at The Independent as a member of the newspaper's launch staff.

Marr soon left though, and joined The Economist, where he wrote the weekly "Bagehot" political column and ultimately became political editor. Marr has commented that his spell at The Economist "changed me quite a lot" and "made me question a lot of my assumptions".

After his time at The Economist, Marr returned to The Independent as the newspaper's political editor, eventually becoming editor. His editorship coincided with a particularly turbulent time at the paper. Faced with price cutting by the Murdoch owned Times, sales had been in decline, and Marr made two attempts to arrest the slide. He pioneered the use of bold 'poster-style' front pages, and then in 1996, radically re-designed the paper along a mainland European model, with Gill Sans headline fonts and stories being themed and grouped together, rather than according to strict news value. This tinkering ultimately proved disastrous. The limited advertising budget meant the paper's re-launch struggled to get noticed, and when it did, it was mocked for reinterpreting its original marketing slogan 'It Is - Are You' to read 'It's changed - have you?'. The response from some was that many existing readers had indeed changed - to The Guardian, and at the beginning of 1998, Marr was sacked after refusing to implement a further round of redundancies.

Three months later, he returned to the Independent. Tony O'Reilly had increased his stake in the paper and bought out then-owners, Mirror Group. O'Reilly, who had a high regard for Marr, asked him to collaborate as co-editor with Rosie Boycott, in an arrangement where Marr would edit the comment pages, and Boycott would have overall control of the news pages.

Many pundits predicted the arrangement would not last and two months later, Boycott left to replace Richard Addis as editor of the Daily Express. Marr was sole editor again, but only for one week. Simon Kelner, who had worked on the paper when it first started was offered the editorship, and asked Marr to stay on as a political columnist. Kelner was not Marr's "cup of tea", Marr observed later and he left the paper for the final time in May 1998.

At the BBC

Marr wrote as a columnist for The Daily Express and The Observer, before gaining appointment as BBC political editor in May 2000, making him one of the best-known if peculiar-looking faces on British television. Like his predecessor-but-one John Cole and his famous herringbone overcoat, he soon developed a trademark style, characterised by much gesticulation, hand-waving and ear-waggling. He also became known for, and was widely praised for, his ability to contextualise Westminster gossip and intrigue, and explain to viewers and listeners how it would affect their lives. A great believer in the view that 'politics matters', Marr championed the democratic process and saw it as part of his role as Political Editor of the BBC to help make politics meaningful and relevant for many people for whom politics was traditionally boring, dull and something that happened only in Westminster corridors with middle-aged men in suits.

Among his notable "scoops" as Political Editor were the second resignation of Peter Mandelson, and the interview in the autumn of 2004 in which Tony Blair told him that he would not seek a fourth term as Prime Minister should he win the forthcoming general election.

During his time as political editor, Marr also assumed various presenting jobs, and announced in 2005 that following the 2005 General Election, he would step down as Political Editor to spend more time with his family. He was replaced as Political Editor by Nick Robinson. In September 2005, he moved to a new role presenting the BBC's Sunday morning flagship news programme, Sunday AM (now known as The Andrew Marr Show) (the slot was previously filled with Breakfast with Frost and hosted by Sir David Frost). Marr also hosts the BBC Radio 4 programme Start the Week.

Marr has written several books on politics and journalism, notably The Day Britain Died (2000) — a state-of-the-nation reflection — and My Trade: A Short History of British Journalism (2004). The former was, in addition, a three-part television series; following Newsnight in the BBC2 schedules, 31 January 2000 – 2 February 2000. He has also written several articles for the British political magazine Prospect.

Politics and bias

Marr has written about the need to remain impartial and "studiously neutral" whilst delivering news reports and "convey fact, and nothing more". Despite this, critics who have analysed Marr's reports assert that Marr's reporting represents an "establishment mouthpiece". Marr responded to such criticisms as "pernicious anti-journalism". Media analysts David Edwards and David Cromwell, in their book "Guardians of Power", cite this statement by Marr on BBC news in 2003, after the coalition invasion of Iraq, as evidence of Marr's bias:

"I don't think anybody after this is going to be able to say of Tony Blair that he's somebody who is driven by the drift of public opinion, or focus groups, or opinion polls. He took all of those on. He said that they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right. And it would be entirely ungracious, even for his critics, not to acknowledge that tonight he stands as a larger man and a stronger prime minister as a result."

In his 2007 TV history of Britain, he showed this sequence of himself and described it as an example of people being "carried away", perhaps an oblique acceptance of the criticism discussed above.

The same critics also presented comments written by Marr in The Observer newspaper in 1999 as evidence of Marr's lack of impartiality during the Kosovan crisis :

"Having said that I thought it was disastrous to start with, and I do, I want to put the Macbeth option: which is that we're so steeped in blood we should go further. If we really believe Milosevic is this bad, dangerous and destabilising figure we must ratchet this up much further. We should now be saying that we intend to put in ground troops. I don't believe this stuff about the Serbian army being an undefeatable, extraordinary, superhuman group.".

Whilst writing his column in The Guardian newspaper, Marr expressed a number of political views. In 1999, he advocated :

"widespread and vigorous miscegenation"

and defended the implementation of the Race Relations Act after the Stephen Lawrence enquiry stating :

"And the final answer, frankly, is the vigorous use of state power to coerce and repress. It may be my Presbyterian background, but 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."

In the Daily Telegraph he described himself as a "libertarian" when discussing his conflicting views on smoking bans. There have been claims that he is a closet Labour supporter, however others such as the conservative Andrew Neil have stated his journalism to be perfectly objective.

In October 2006 Andrew Marr said: "The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It's a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias."

Personal life

Marr lives in South West London with his wife, the political journalist Jackie Ashley of The Guardian, whom he married in August 1987. She is a daughter of the former Labour Member of Parliament, Jack Ashley. The couple have three children. He once jokingly wrote in a newspaper that he had no idea what to get his wife for Christmas, so was intending to buy her a burqa. Jackie Ashley responded by writing in to the paper to say that he would probably get her the wrong size anyway.{{Fact|date=April 2007}. The fact of Marr fathering a child on Alice Miles of The Times whilst married to Jackie Ashley went unreported until Paul Staines covered it on his Guido Fawkes blog on Friday January 18 2008. The cover-up raises issues of the professional credibility of Marr and his incapacity, because of his own situation, to raise issues of personal morality amongst public figures. Indeed the Right On Media blog has suggested that this personal liability and his fear of discovery caused him to have to leave his role as Political Correspondent of the BBC earlier than planned. Further the whole issue of the reexamination of stories filed by Marr whilst so compromised is now a mater of urgent discussion amongst senior BBC management who wish to avoid further scandals rocking the BBC.

Awards

He was named Columnist of the Year 1995 and Columnist of the Year in the British Press Awards and received the Journalist Award in the Channel 4 Political Awards of 2001.

He was considered for honorary membership of The Coterie for 2007 . Marr was on the bottom of the nominations list for the 2004 Richard Dimbleby Award at the Bafta Television Awards .

Trivia

• As a teenager Mr Marr wrote and drew a cartoon strip for Chainsaw fanzine.

• In one of his books, Andrew Marr claims to have been mistaken for President Vladimir Putin of Russia. He recounts that he was once lost on his way to a briefing at the Kremlin and was spotted by two soldiers, but instead of being arrested for trespassing they looked alarmed and saluted him. Marr also recounts an incident where he was approached by a man in a shop who said, "Here, you look just like that Andrew Marr... you poor bugger."

• He appeared as himself in the 2005 series of Doctor Who in the episodes "Aliens of London" and "World War Three". He has also appeared in several episodes of The Amazing Mrs Pritchard.

• He appears in the novel Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday and reads his part in the audiobook.

• The comedy impersonation programme Dead Ringers pokes fun at his long arms by using ridiculously long plastic arms when portraying him.

• He likes to keep fit, and can often be spotted jogging through open spaces in south-west London such as Richmond Park and Wimbledon Common.

References

1. Michael White "Robinson poached from ITN as BBC name successor to Marr", The Guardian, 21 June 2005. Retrieved on 28 April 2007.
2. Paul Vallely "Profile: Andrew Marr - On a roll: the BBC's all-action, 24-hour The Independent, 2 November 2002. Retrieved on 28 April 2006.
3. Marr, Andrew (2004). My Trade: A short history of British Journalism. Macmillan. pp. p.279. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
4. David Edwards and David Cromwell. Guardians of Power. p.106-7
5. David Edwards and David Cromwell. Guardians of Power. p.53
6. David Edwards and David Cromwell. Guardians of Power. p.71
7. Marr, Andrew (1999-02-28). "Poor? Stupid? Racist? Then don't listen to a pampered white liberal like me?". The Guardian. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
9. Paul Vallely "Profile: Andrew Marr - On a roll: the BBC's all-action, 24-hour The Independent, 2 November 2002. Retrieved on 28 April 2006.
10. Walters, Simon (2006-10-21). "We are biased, admit the stars of BBC News". Daily Mail. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
11. Martin Bright, New Statesman, 22-01-07
12. BAFTA 2004: New Ground, Russell Davies, pg. 80
13. Marr, Andrew (2004). My Trade: A short history of British Journalism. Macmillan. pp. p. 257. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)

External links

• Press Office — Andrew Marr — BBC biography
• 'Marr quits as BBC political chief' — BBC News
• Off The Telly: The Day That Britain Died — A review of BBC2's The Day That Britain Died
• TV is less up itself than newspapers — The Guardian
• Biogs.com information
• Interview with Noam Chomsky Transcript - The Big Idea - BBC, 1996
• Andrew Marr MySpace Group

• 1959 births
• Alumni of Trinity Hall, Cambridge
• BBC newsreaders and journalists
• Former Trotskyists
• High School of Dundee alumni
• Living people
• Old Lorettonians
• People from Glasgow
• British political pundits
• Scottish columnists
• Scottish journalists
• Scottish newspaper editors
• Scottish political writers
• Scottish television presenters