A film critic and provider of fine pickled onions. That’s a good life
Collecting his CBE with wife Diana & their two daughters fitter than me. I could have been in trouble.”
Barry, from Highgate, North London, was the son of film director Leslie Norman. After school he became a journalist on the Kensington News, later moving to Fleet Street where he met wife Diana and they married in 1957. Diana, who wrote best-selling historical thrillers under the name Ariana Franklin, died of heart failure in 2011 aged 77. As well as being the longestrunning host of BBC1’S Film show, he made documentaries and wrote for newspapers and magazines. He was the first host of BBC Radio 4’s The News Quiz and presented the Today programme. Barry was famously parodied on comedy puppet show Spitting Image, which created the catchphrase “And why not?” – which he used as the title of his autobiography. His agent Curtis Brown said he was “the defining voice of film criticism and insightful interviewing of screen legends from both sides of the camera”.
Speaking of his legacy in 2001 Barry said: “When I started, people were asked to go on television because it was felt that they could bring some sort of knowledge to what they were discussing, and because they could speak in complete sentences, which is getting increasingly rare.
“I think the difference now is that people go on television because they want to be celebrities and that seems to be an empty ambition.
“I do like to feel I’ve contributed something, as well as just sitting there.”
alan.selby@mirror.co.uk