Richard Barnes was born in 1943. He is a former continuity announcer at Anglia Television (1971 – 1975 and c. 1983), Westward TV, ATV, TSW, Central TV (c. 1985) and BFBS.
Correspondence
Paul R. Jackson corresponded with Richard in February 2018. He asked him about his career.
“I was born in Guildford, Surrey and attended Surbiton County Grammar School.
“On leaving in 1961, I went straight into a large London advertising agency where I stayed for four years, eventually buying advertising time for major clients, which is how I made my early TV contacts.
“From there it was to ABC TV in Hanover Square, London in 1965 as a sales researcher, transferring to Teddington Studios a year later as a promotion scriptwriter, making trails and writing continuity scripts for the announcers David Hamilton, Philip Elsmore and Sheila Kennedy.
“When ABC merged with Rediffusion to form Thames TV, I was unable to continue so joined Harlech TV in Cardiff, then moved to Granada, Manchester in 1969 as promotion scriptwriter.
“Having always wanted to become an in-vision announcer, I succeeded with Anglia TV and moved to Norwich in August 1971, where I stayed full-time until August 1975.
“Funnily enough I never auditioned for Anglia – it was a Granada audition tape which got me the job!
“Keith Martin, who I had first met, as you say, when writing scripts for ABC where he was relief announcer, regularly freelanced with Anglia and it was he who put me on to BFBS which was starting a television service in Germany, albeit organised from London (it began broadcasting from 18th September 1975).
“I stayed full-time for 20 years, first as senior presentation assistant both organising and presenting on-screen, then head of presentation and subsequently programme planning. It was a good career.
“During my time with BFBS, I managed to freelance as an announcer, principally with Anglia, Westward/TSW and ATV/Central.
“Despite researching through my files, I appear to have kept no contract details, so don’t have precise dates of when I worked with Westward/TSW although sporadic between about 1976 and 1986.
“I did a few spells of a couple of weeks at a time plus some weekends as I recall, similarly with Anglia during the same period. I may even have worked a few shifts at Westward and ATV whilst full-time with Anglia. Can’t remember for sure – it’s a long time ago!
“Regarding work with ATV, I did weekend in-vision announcing around the time I was leaving Anglia full-time in 1975 including the appearances on Tiswas.
“After that I’m unsure until 1982, when Central took over and I was contracted for a few months in the east of the region based in Nottingham over weekends to appear and to help train Gary Terrza.
“Due to industrial action as I remember, I made no appearances in the east and was switched to Birmingham to complete the contract. After that I made a few sporadic appearances including the 1985 recording on YouTube of which I was unaware until researching for yourself recently!
“There are three main examples of my in-vision work of which I’m aware on YouTube, please let me know if you find more! These are:
- Clip 1: introducing and appearing in the first recording made of Tiswas (albeit on U-matic with time code) in 1975, when it was purely a local programme and I was standing in for the regular weekend announcer Peter Tomlinson, who had devised the show. I only ever appeared in three shows!
- Clip 2: this is BFBS Television (1983). A complete programme about the operation of the TV service (continuity intro by Keith Martin).
- Clip 3: Central Independent Television continuity 1985.
“By 1985, my in-vision freelancing was coming to an end.
“I’m proud of the fact that my son Tony followed me into broadcasting for a spell as a journalist/presenter working on Granada Reports (c. 1996), then ITN and subsequently anchor for Channel 5’s 5 News.
“He now lives in Australia and works in cyber security.
“My own career continued with BFBS full-time, then part-time until the early noughties when I also did some work for South West Trains and Chiltern Railways.
“I’m now fully retired and living with my lady in Harrogate, North Yorkshire.”
Personal information
Clips of Richard on The TV Room
Richard may be featured in video/audio clips on our other websites. Click the links below to display a listing (a 404 error will appear if no clips are found):
Online presence
Acknowledgements
PICTURED: Richard Barnes (early 1980s). SUPPLIED BY: Paul R. Jackson. COPYRIGHT: Unknown.
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