Barry Fantoni dead: BBC legend dies as Ian Hislop pays tribute

Barry Fantoni, who wrote scripts for That Was The Week That Was and presented A Whole Scene Going On for the BBC, has died at the age of 85, following a heart attack. He died on Tuesday May 20 at his home in Turin, Italy. The news was confirmed by Private Eye magazine where he also made his mark as a cartoonist.

Have I Got News For You star and Private Eye editor Ian Hislop paid tribute. “Barry was a brilliant multi-talented writer, artist and musician. He was an integral part of Private Eye’s comic writing team from the early days in the sixties and I hugely enjoyed collaborating with him when I joined the magazine later on. He created formats and characters and jokes that are still running and he was for a long time the voice of the great poet and obituarist E J Thribb. So farewell then Barry.”

He studied at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts from the age of 14 after being granted the Wedgewood Scholarship for the Arts and began his career in the 1960s becoming a prominent a figure in the 1960s pop art movement.

In the early part of the decade he wrote scripts for the popular satirical show, That Was the Week That Was, which was presented by David Frost.

He then made the move to the other side of the camera becoming a popular figure presenting the corporation’s fashion and music programme, A Whole Scene Going from 1966.

Aimed at the under 21s, the show explored teenage topics and featured appearances from musicians, including the Spencer Davis Group and Pete Townshend.

Versatile Bary was also was a long-term member of the Private Eye editorial team from 1963 onwards and was a diary cartoonist for the Times and produced caricatures for listings magazine Radio Times from the mid 1960s.

Some of the famous subjects he turned into caricatures include Sir Bruce Forsyth, DJ Tony Blackburn and comedian Sir Ken Dodd.

In the 1970s he added another string to his bow becoming a record reviewer for Punch magazine.

In 2010 he announced his retirement from Private Eye after 47 years. “It was just time to leave. I’d done it. The establishment isn’t even worth puncturing any more,” he told The Independent of his decision.