WELCOME to Barn Productions

Barry Johnston

BARN PRODUCTIONS was established in 2006 by Barry Johnston as a producer, abridger and packager of audiobooks for clients such as Hodder & Stoughton, BBC, Time Warner, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Audio and Heavy Entertainment. It was originally based in a converted Victorian barn in Rutland, but is now located near Chichester.

BARRY JOHNSTON is an award-winning audio producer and has abridged and produced more than 100 audiobooks such as the No. 1 bestsellers Johnners at the Beeb, An Evening with Johnners andThe Wit of Cricket. He has also abridged numerous books for Book of the Week and Book at Bedtime on BBC Radio 4.

Barry now works for major publishers as an editor and copyeditor on dozens of books by authors such as Chris Ryan, Robert Peston, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Mick Fleetwood, Alan Titchmarsh, James May, Eddie Hearn, Jo Brand, and many more. He has published ten books, including the Sunday Times bestseller Letters Home 1926–1945 and two critically acclaimed biographies of Kenneth Horne and of his father, the late BBC cricket commentator Brian Johnston.

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Barry Johnston was educated at Eton College.  After leaving school he became a songwriter for The Beatles’ company Apple Publishing, and then joined the vocal harmony group Design who appeared on over fifty TV shows in the 1970s including Morecambe and Wise, Tommy Cooper, Benny Hill and The Two Ronnies. 

When the group ended after eight years, Barry became the personal manager of The New Seekers.  Then in 1981 he moved to Hollywood where he enrolled at the Los Angeles Broadcasting School.  He was signed up by KLOA-AM Radio in Ridgecrest, California, and presented the KLOA breakfast show for two years.

In 1985 Barry returned to England and became a presenter on BBC Radio  Sussex in Brighton. Over the next eight years he presented almost every programme including the breakfast show Good Morning Sussex and the daily consumer programme Sussex Standard.  In 1990 he was invited to join the new BBC Radio 5 and was the presenter of the Sunday breakfast show Sunday Edition for 18 months.

In 1992 Barry formed BARRYMOUR PRODUCTIONS with ex-BBC producer Chris Seymour and began to make the move from broadcasting into production and writing.  Since then he has produced dozens of audiobooks for major companies such as BBC, Hodder Headline and Macmillan, and has recorded Tony Benn, Dickie Bird, Henry Blofeld, Steve Coogan, Jack Dee, John Humphrys, Maureen Lipman, Sir Michael Parkinson, Alan Titchmarsh and Shane Warne, among many others. In 2007 Barry took over BarryMour Productions and its catalogue is now administered by Barn Productions.