2001, she occasionally appeared as a relief newsreader on Channel 4's breakfast show The Big Breakfast (the programme replaced The Channel Four Daily, on which Barnes had appeared). Personal life Barnes had two children. The elder, Clare, was from her six-year relationship with Denis MacShane, later a Labour Foreign Office minister. Clare Barnes was born in 1979 and died in March 2004, aged 24, in a skydiving accident over Barwon Heads, south-west of Melbourne, Australia. Her son James was born a year after she married ITN cameraman Nigel Thomson in 1981. A keen golfer and one-time qualified private pilot, Barnes resided in Brighton, and became a local magistrate in 1999, until forced to stand down after being convicted of a drink-driving offence in 2004, shortly after her daughter's death. Later life and death On 18 January 2008, Barnes presented Saving Ed Mitchell on ITV1, a programme about her former colleague Ed Mitchell's descent into alcoholism. On 4 March 2008, the Daily Mirror newspaper reported that she had suffered a life-threatening stroke that had left her in a coma. Her doctors did not expect her to recover, and several of her closest friends also voiced these fears. Her son James gave doctors permission to switch off her life support system after they had warned him that there was no reasonable hope that she would recover. While Barnes was dying in hospital, her London flat was burgled. After Barnes died, The Argus newspaper in Brighton, where she had lived for some years, decided to name their Courageous Child of the Year Award after her. The Carol Barnes Courageous Child of the Year Award is one of around 20 awards given to unsung yet deserving heroes of Sussex at an annual ceremony, hosted by the newspaper. References Bibliography Obituary, The Daily Telegraph, 8 March 2008 Obituary, The Times, 9 March 2008 Obituary, The Guardian, 10 March 2008 Obituary, The Independent, 10 March 2008 External links 1944 births 2008 deaths Alumni of the University of Birmingham Alumni of the University of Sheffield British radio people British reporters and correspondents English television presenters ITN newsreaders and journalists People from Brighton Media personalities from Norwich