Island Life Magazine Ltd December 2011/January 2012 | Page 51

INTERVIEW

it back after we finished filming, so for
the next few months we were giving
everyone boxes of the stuff.”
But undoubtedly the most infamous
character he ever filmed was Idi Amin,
the military leader and President of
Uganda from 1971 to 1979, and a
man reckoned to have been responsible
for killing up to 500,000 people before
his own death in 1993.
Barry said: “Whenever
Amin got married, which
was every few weeks, he
wanted it filmed, and I
was commissioned by their
Ministry of Information,
but in fact I was working for
Amin. I was there filming all
the time - when he opened
night clubs or did anything
else.
“I never saw anyone killed, although
obviously it did happen. I lived in
hotels in Uganda, and stayed there
about eight months. Later I was sent
back to film him a couple more times
but he was getting fed up with me, so
he put me under house arrest. I was
put in a hotel, and couldn’t leave until
he said so.
“Generally he was all right with me,
but of course he expelled thousands of
Asians from Uganda during his time in
charge. I never really feared for my life
– I was just getting on with my job,
and didn’t really think about things

like that.”
While employed by a news agency,
Barry worked in many other African
countries, and recalls how one
journalist he worked with often
disappeared into a Government
building in South Africa, explaining
he was ‘just looking out for things
and reporting back’. He admitted: “I
suppose if he had been caught neither

said. “But I still have the certificate
that proved I did it.”
He also lived and worked in Russia
during the Cold War of the early
1960s. “Strangely they were trying to
promote the country, but had a poor
process of filming in colour. So they
got the company I worked for to film
in Eastman Colour all over the USSR.”
Having travelled the world covering
many horrific and
memorable events,
including plane crashes,
murder inquiries and
riots, Barry still does
work on the Island
for Meridian TV and
with Vectis Television
colleague Alan Philpott,
and says Cowes Week is
now one of his biggest assignments.
But 10 years ago filming the famous
regatta nearly ended in disaster. While
covering the sailing he collapsed
and fell headfirst over the rocks and
suffered head injuries that required
hospital treatment and 38 stitches.
Undeterred, he discharged himself
to continue his assignment – and for
once found himself in front of the
camera, on the local news.
“I still enjoy what I am doing. It is in
my veins, and I don’t know anything
else,” he concluded.

'I never really feared for
my life – I was just getting
on with my job'
of us would have made it out.”
After returning to England Barry
worked for Granada TV on news,
current affairs, Jewel in the Crown,
Tomorrow’s World and inevitably
Coronation Street. He smiled: “While
I worked there I lived in the car park
in a motor home.”
Barry also filmed in Northern Ireland
at the height of the troubles, but he
feels his scariest moment was filming
in a cargo plane that landed on US
aircraft carrier Nimitz. “That was
quite frightening, coming into land on
a ship and being stopped by ‘an elastic
band’ stretched across the deck,” he

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