Barry Norman
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Barry Norman (born August 21, 1933) is a British film critic and television presenter.
Norman was educated at a state primary school and at the Highgate School, a boys' Independent school in North London. He did not go to university. The son of film director Leslie Norman, he began his journalistic career at the Kensington News, later spending a period in South Africa where he developed a hostility to the situation created there by the emergence of apartheid. By the 1960s, Norman was a prominent journalist, and show business editor of the Daily Mail until 1971, when he was made redundant. Subsequently, he wrote a column each Wednesday for The Guardian, also contributing leader columns to the newspaper.
He presented BBC1's Film programme from 1972, becoming the sole presenter the following year, although the programme was not transmitted outside of London and the south-east for the first few years. Norman's tenure was broken in 1982 by a brief unhappy spell presenting Omnibus. After returning to the Film series, Norman became increasingly irritated by the BBC's reluctance to screen the programme at a regular time, and he accepted an offer in 1998 to work for BSkyB, where he remained for three years. Jonathan Ross took his place as the BBC programme's presenter.
Norman has written and presented a number of documentary series for the BBC, including Hollywood Greats (1977-79, 1983), British Greats (1980) and Talking Pictures (1987). A member of the Liberal Democrats, he supported Charles Kennedy's stance on the second Iraq war. He has also contributed a column to the Radio Times for many years, and written a number of novels.
He is associated with the phrase "and why not?", which originated not as his catchphrase but as that of his puppet likeness on the satirical show Spitting Image. Norman has since adopted the phrase himself, and it is the title of his autobiography. In a recent ITV documentary on Spitting Image, Norman admitted initially hating the way his puppet looked on the programme, but later somewhat moderated his attitude and felt flattered that the series found him famous enough to include him in its sketches.
Barry Norman was once a regular radio broadcaster. He is a former chairman of The News Quiz on Radio 4 and also presented for the network, The Chip Shop, an early 1980s series dedicated to the emerging home computer industry.
[edit] Trivia
- He is 6ft 1in in height.
