My friend Beccy Barr, who has died aged 46 from abdominal cancer, was at the top of her game as a regional TV presenter when she quit, aged 41, and became a firefighter.
Her new colleagues at Lancashire Fire and Rescue were initially suspicious when this glamorous woman swapped the sofa on BBC North West Tonight for night shifts with Red Watch in Blackburn, with some of them suspecting she was secretly recording an exposé for Panorama.
They soon realised Beccy was totally committed to her new career. In 2021, the fire service was co-opted into the national Covid vaccination drive. “This is as close as I’ll ever get to feeling like a superhero!” she tweeted after a busy day of inoculation.
Some tall women try to make themselves smaller. Beccy, a 6ft 2in blonde bombshell (“Big Bird” to her lifelong best friends from Lancaster girls’ grammar), was once asked in a job interview why she always wore heels. “To intimidate men,” she replied. She got the gig. She never lost her Lancastrian accent, having refused elocution lessons early in her career.
She was born in Cambridge, but grew up in the north-west, where her mum, Michele Pomphrey, worked as an HR professional in the NHS, and her father, Roy, was a firefighter (and the inspiration behind Beccy’s later career change). Beccy studied government and economics at the London School of Economics, graduating in 2000, and then did a postgraduate diploma in newspaper journalism at City University.
One of her first TV jobs was as a reporter at Bloomberg in London, where she soon amassed something of a fan club among City workers. Discovering that her most ardent admirers had formed the Rebecca Barr Appreciation Society on Facebook, she joined it, met up with them for pints, and even let them cull her profile picture to print on mugs for their members.
In 2007 she married Alex Meehan, a 6ft 7in commercial executive. The vicar said they were easily the tallest couple he had ever married. In 2010, while Beccy was working for the business news channel CNBC in London, their daughter, Hannah (“the small blonde”), was born. She was the most important person in Beccy’s life. Beccy joined the BBC two years later, and was a presenter on North West Tonight until 2019.
A fitness fanatic who completed Ironman triathlons and would swim in the docks outside Media City in Salford before her weekend shifts at the BBC, Beccy loved a night out as much as a workout.
A Guide leader since her 20s, she took a Girl Guiding flag to the top of Kilimanjaro on a reporting job, and helped develop a new badge for Rainbows, Brownies, Guides and Rangers called “Ready, Steady, Help!”
When it became clear that her cancer was terminal, she decided she wanted to be a role model for dying well, with grace and acceptance. “I’m accepting of it in the main, but also a little bit pissed off I won’t grow old,” she said, while planning her funeral.
Alongside her job as a firefighter, Beccy studied for a master’s in disaster management at Bournemouth University, learning in the hospice just before she died that she was being awarded a distinction.
Beccy’s marriage to Alex ended in divorce. She is survived by Hannah, and by her parents, sister, Jen, and grandmother, Cissie.
