His passage into the limelight started, as for so many of the successful comedians of today, at London's Comedy Store. It was there that he started impersonating celebrities, originally "for a bit of a laugh".
"It was a very scary experience but it was great fun. You looked forward to honing your act, to giving the audience a show. The money was just incidental". Nevertheless, when offered a job on the 'Spitting Image' team, he seized the opportunity, soon to find himself outclassed by a budding talent called Rory Bremner. "I wasn't a natural one-man performer and Rory was starting to do his stuff. He was taking a hold, he had all the attitude, knew how to write and looked like a man who was hungry for it. In comparison, I was stuck in a relative backwater".
'Red Dwarf' was to change all that. After seven years of the hit sci-fi comedy, all of its stars have become household names. But it was the three series of 'The Brittas Empire' that would single out Barrie as an individual talent and earn him his own slice of infamy. Under the memorable headline, "I stripped for sex but he put on a flat cap and plimsolls", 26-year-old Monica Turner sold the story of how she attempted to seduce Barrie, "the real-life Mr Brittas", after meeting him in a London bar. The episode ended like an Ealing farce, with Turner stripping off, suffering an asthma attack and being carted off to hospital while Barrie found himself at the centre of a sleaze storm that never was.
"It was a ridiculous situation", he recalls, speaking for the first time about the bizarre episode. "I'd taken her home because she'd said that she didn't have her house keys. Instead of dropping her off at the bus stop, Mr Softy here said that she could come back and stay in my spare room. Then she asked if I minded if she took a bath. The next thing I hear is all this whooping and splashing around so I panicked and rang for an ambulance. All that business about me lying on the bed, naked except for a paid of slippers, and talking like Brittas is nonsense".
Even so, it was enough to cause temporary ructions with Aleks, Barrie's girlfriend, who he has been seeing for six years "on and off". The couple used to live together, but after a period of "reassessment" they now have separate homes. Aleks works in the fashion trade, and while Barrie jokes of his bedroom caper, he admits the experience has tempered his private dealings. "When you get into the public eye, you've got to work out who's genuine and who's not".
For the record, Chris was born in 1960. He had been married once, at the age of 27, to an Italian called Monica, but it soon turned sour. "It was one of those things, a mistake. I confused love for sex. We were married for three years and it was tempestuous, but fun. Expensive fun. Like a lot of Italian women, she had a great personality and was gorgeous to look at but we couldn't live together". Monica has since moved to America and now they have little contact with each other.
Her departure marked the start of Barrie's evolution as a fine comic actor. Seven years on, Gary Prince will reaffirm that status. While another series of 'Red Dwarf' is in discussion, Chris says that Brittas will not rise from his televisual grave. "It was time to hang up the side parting". In its place comes Prince and his perm, every bit as annoying as anything Chris has done before. Whatever his guise, he will be the master of irritation for many years to come.
UPDATE 2001
Since this interview Chris and Aleks have surmounted their differences and got married. 'A Prince Among Men' was not a great success, lasting just two series, but Chris Barrie's career continues unabated with more 'Red Dwarf' on TV and in film, and the beginnings of a Hollywood career with a role in 'Tomb Raider'.