CAROL BARNESCarol Barnes, who died on 8 March, 2008, from a stroke, was a newsreader who spent nearly three decades covering global events for ITN.She fronted the flagship programme News at Ten during the 1980s and ’90s and also went on assignments to cover key stories in Northern Ireland and America.She was popular with audiences and colleagues alike and was known for her good nature and sense of humour, but also a ruthless and determined journalistic streak which earned her the ‘Newscaster of the Year’ award from the Television & Radio Industries Club in 1994.Carol Lesley Barnes was born in Norwich on 13 September, 1944, and raised in Tooting, South London. Her first stint within the education system was an unhappy one and she left school at the earliest opportunity to train as a fashion buyer. However, shortly afterwards she decided to take A-levels and then studied languages at Sheffield University.Having undergone this change of feeling towards education, she trained as a teacher at Birmingham University, but her career veered again when she took a PR job with the Royal Court Theatre on Sloane Square. This led to her first journalism job with Time Out magazine and in 1973 she joined LBC, Britain’s first commercial radio station.She was initially writing scripts, but her on-air debut came when a regular newsreader failed to turn up one day. She stepped into the breach and immediately discovered a hitherto unknown aptitude for newsreading.The following year she joined Radio 4’s The World at One and was subsequently hired by ITN as a reporter. During the1970s she was also an active member of the National Union of Journalists.Her early reporting for ITN demonstrated her typical commitment to her job – she covered the Brixton riots while seven months pregnant and was furious when bosses, fearing for her safety as a woman, would not let her travel to Iran in pursuit of Ayatollah Khomeini who was returning from exile in France.In 1982 she began co-hosting News at Ten for the first of two periods, leaving for two years in 1989 for the chair of Channel 4’s short-lived Daily breakfast programme. Her good looks and plummy voice made her an easily recognisable figure and she landed several other presenting jobs. When she left News at Ten for the second time in 1998 she was earning a reported £180,000 a year.She then worked as a freelance, reporting for the ill-fated ITV News channel and Meridian TV. She also trained as a magistrate in yet another career change and sat at courts in East Sussex from 2000. She also made public speaking appearances, talking passionately about women’s rights.In 2004 she suffered the tragic loss of her 24-year-old daughter Clare in a sky-diving accident. Clare was the daughter of Labour MP and former trade unionist Denis MacShane with whom Ms Barnes had a seven-year relationship in the 1970s. Friends said she never recovered from the loss and shortly afterwards she was convicted of drink-driving, forcing her to resign her place on the bench.She made her last television appearance in January 2008, presenting Saving Ed Mitchell, a documentary about her former ITN colleague who had succumbed to alcoholism and become homeless.Still active at the age of 63, Ms Barnes was preparing for a safari holiday when she suffered a stroke on 4 March. She died four days later at Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton. She was survived by her son James from her marriage to ITN cameraman Nigel Thomson (1981-1987).
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