Barack Obama has revealed that there was just one day since entering the White House that he felt 'unhappy' being the President-when his "date night" with wife Michelle became a political issue.

In an interview, the President said that on one Saturday in May when he kept a campaign promise to take his wife to New York after the election for one of their "date nights" - dinner and a Broadway play.

But his good husband gesture did not go quite well with Conservative commentators and Republican officials, who criticised him for doing so.

"People made it into a political issue," the Telegraph quoted Obama as telling a magazine for an article about the Obamas' marriage. The article was posted on a web site on Wednesday.

"If I weren't president, I would be happy to catch the shuttle with my wife to take her to a Broadway show, as I had promised her during the campaign, and there would be no fuss and no muss and no photographers. That would please me greatly," he added.

However, Presidents have to travel by secure, government aircraft or vehicles. "The notion that I just couldn't take my wife out on a date without it being a political issue was not something I was happy with," said Obama.

The article explores the effects of the presidency on the couple's 17-year union and revisits well-documented tension between them in earlier years when Obama pursued his political career in Illinois, leaving his wife largely home alone in Chicago with their daughters.