Barry Mitchell (born March 6, 1952) is a Brooklyn-born comedian, musician and TV producer. Mitchell is also known as "Accordion Guy" to viewers of ABC-TV's quirky, overnight broadcast, World News Now. He started contributing topical song parodies to the program in 1992, and later became its roving feature reporter, conducting celebrity interviews and scouring the country for oddball stories and personalities.
Mitchell played accordion in Long Island, NY wedding bands in the mid-1970s, and later worked as a radio newswriter for WHLI-AM. In the late 1970s he worked briefly for NBC Radio News and Information Service in Rockefeller Center before starting to earn a living as a stand-up comedian.
In 1992, Mitchell wrote and performed what was to become World News Now's signature closing theme, the tongue-in-cheek "World News Polka". Many different versions of the Polka were created over the years, the most famous being the music video in which Mitchell was accompanied by two attractive female singers dressed in journalistic trenchcoats, who sang backup while waving large hand microphones, with many in-jokes acknowledging Disney's ownership of ABC. Other versions of Mitchell's Polka include one featuring an Elvis impersonator, another with an all-ukulele band, and one starring a water-harpist. In January, 2011, Mitchell appeared live in studio, singing special lyrics celebrating World News Now's nineteenth anniversary: "Brand new year and brand new set, same old tune you can't forget."
In the 1980s, Mitchell's uncanny impression of Woody Allen earned him parts in TV commercials and sketch work on Saturday Night Live and Late Night with Conan O'Brien. In between, he has written monologue material for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Wayne Cotter of Fox's Comic Strip Live. In 2004, he was part of the writing team for That Was The Week That Was, ABC's short-lived attempt to revive the 1963 BBC satire series as a segment of Primetime Live.
Since May, 2005, Mitchell has worked as a producer/reporter for CUNY-TV, the public affairs cable channel of the City University of New York, available in the five boroughs of New York City on Channel 75 and online at cuny.tv.
Famous quotes containing the words barry and/or mitchell:
“But whether on the scaffold high,
Or in the battle’s van,
The fittest place where man can die
Is where he dies for man.”
—Michael J. Barry (1817–1889)
“Comedy comes from conflict, from hatred.”
—Warren Mitchell (b. 1926)