13 Facts About Carol Barnes

Carol Lesley Barnes was a British television newsreader and broadcaster.

Carol Barnes did not like school, and left at the age of 16, taking a number of jobs for a year, before leaving to study for A levels at a local college of further education.

Carol Barnes graduated from Sheffield University with a degree in English, French and Spanish, followed by a postgraduate teaching diploma at the University of Birmingham.

Carol Barnes started her working life as a supply teacher, but decided to switch to a career in media, and held various posts including public relations officer for the Royal Court Theatre in London and sub-editor on the magazine Time Out, before moving into broadcasting, working for Independent Radio News.

Carol Barnes was one of the original news team members at the launch of radio station LBC in 1973, and then worked as a reporter for BBC Radio 4 for a year, before joining ITN in 1975.

Carol Barnes made her name as a reporter with ITN on the lunchtime news in the late 1970s, but her first stint as a newscaster came in March 1980 when she began alternating with Michael Nicholson as presenter on the News at 5:45.

Carol Barnes was a regular presenter on the ITN Lunchtime News and ITN's weekend news bulletins from July 1985 until March 1989, and again between January 1991 and 1998.

Carol Barnes regularly fronted the ITN flagship News at Ten programme, as well as other current affairs programmes, and in 1994 was voted Newscaster of the Year at the TV and Radio Industries Club Awards.

Carol Barnes left ITN in 1999, and then returned in 2003 to work on their short-lived 24-hour ITV News Channel, until leaving again in 2004.

Clare Carol Barnes was born in 1979 and died in March 2004, aged 24, in a skydiving accident over Barwon Heads, south-west of Melbourne, Australia.

Carol Barnes's son James was born a year after she married ITN cameraman Nigel Thomson in 1981.

On 18 January 2008, Carol Barnes presented Saving Ed Mitchell on ITV1, a programme about her former colleague Ed Mitchell's descent into alcoholism.

Carol Barnes's doctors did not expect her to recover, and several of her closest friends voiced these fears.