Barrie Tracey, who owned the Warwickshire News & Photo Agency with his late wife, Pat, has died at the age of 85.
Tracey was well known throughout the industry for his legendary scoops, often involving infamous ‘Costa del Crime’ characters and showbiz celebrities, many who became close friends.
For many years Tracey and his wife lived half the year in Spain and half in the UK in their rambling pile in Leamington Spa. Whilst in Spain, Tracey became firm friends with Ronnie Knight, career criminal, club owner and husband of ‘Carry On’ actress Barbara Windsor. Knight was sought by Scotland Yard in connection with two of Britain’s biggest armed robberies.
Tracey engineered and accompanied Knight back to the UK, having arranged a final pay day for the gangster from the Sun and Sky TV for his exclusive interview. When Knight landed he was promptly arrested on the runway at Luton Airport, eventually serving a seven year sentence. Tracey ghosted Knight’s autobiography, Black Knight in the 1980’s.
It was Tracey who broke the story of Rolling Stones’ Bill Wyman and his relationship with the under-age Mandy Smith and covered the controversial shooting of the three unarmed IRA terrorists in Gibraltar.
The editor of his local paper, the Atherstone News, at just 19, Tracey eventually gravitated to London and found a birth of the Daily Mirror, before realising that selling an exclusive earned more than a month’s wages, and promptly went freelance. He was one of the first journalists to witness the suffering brought about by the famine in Ethiopia and his copy went around the world.
In 1977, following an accident to one of their five children, Tracey and his wife packed all their belongings and their young family into a long-wheelbase Land Rover Defender, hitched up a caravan, and headed for Spain, without a final destination or domicile planned, in search of ‘a better life.’
They eventually settled in Balcones de Sierra Blanca, an area in the mountains above Marbella where, true to character, Tracey was duly elected major.
He was a natural story-teller and linguist and counted such diverse characters as the Spanish singer Julio Iglesias, Ray Harryhausen, the master of stop-motion film, and legendary Hollywood scriptwriters Pat and Jesse Lasky Jr as close friends.
With his wife Pat, they covered exclusive stories all over Europe. More than 40 years ago they were founder members of the National Association of Press Agencies (NAPA), which still represents regional press agencies and negotiates lineage rates with the national press. Tracey served as its treasurer for many years and was presented with NAPA’s highest honour, its Lifetime Achievement Award for Services to Journalism.
His funeral will take place at Oakley Wood Crematorium in Leamington Spa on Wednesday, 10 December at 10am, and all who knew Tracey are welcome to attend.
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