I'm a grown-up and should have known better, admits Andrew Marr over drunken embrace with a colleague.

              Drunken farewell: Mr Marr slips his hand inside the woman's jeans, before drawing   her closer for a kiss,

                     Long marriage: Marr with his wife Jackie, to whom he has been married for 25 years

Andrew Marr yesterday admitted his wife was ‘very cross’ with him after pictures emerged of him in an intimate clinch with another woman.

Suitcase in hand, the BBC broadcaster left the family home he shares with his wife of 25 years Jackie Ashley and their three children yesterday lunchtime.

But the 53-year-old – who last year admitted having an affair with a fellow journalist – insisted he had not been ordered to pack his bags, saying: ‘No, no, not at all. But I would say my wife is very cross with me and quite rightly so.

‘I am a grown-up and I should know better. It was very poor behaviour on my part and she is entirely right to be annoyed.’

Mr Marr, who was picked up from home by a taxi, said he was travelling to America to make a programme on President Obama. 

Asked if there would be making up to do on his return, after images emerged in a Sunday tabloid showing him kissing and fondling another woman, Mr Marr said: ‘Well we will have to see.’

The clinch occurred in the early hours of Saturday after the former BBC political editor and fellow journalists had been drinking at a central London bar to mark the completion of his latest BBC series – History of The World.

A fellow reveller spotted Mr Marr and the woman, a colleague, kissing against a fence at 2.30am outside The Bar, in Fitzrovia.

‘I spotted them hugging and kissing up against the fence,’ said the witness. ‘They were there for a few minutes. Eventually they went back into the bar and stayed until closing time.’

Speaking yesterday, Mr Marr said it was just a drunken clinch, and denied any suggestions he was having an affair. He said: ‘I am really embarrassed and so annoyed with myself. It was just a goodbye clinch.

‘It had been a long drunken evening and it was just a silly thing. It was just two drunken journalists having a farewell clinch after working fantastically hard together for two years. There is no romantic connection between us. There never has been and never will be.’

In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail in April last year, the broadcaster revealed he had obtained a gagging order to hush up an extra-marital affair with another journalist. At the time, he said he felt embarrassed about his attempts to conceal his infidelity, admitting: ‘I did not come into journalism to go around gagging journalists.’ 

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