Joey Barton - Personal Life

Personal Life

Barton's brother Michael Barton was sentenced to life imprisonment (with a tariff of 17 years) for his involvement in the racially motivated murder of Anthony Walker in 2005. Joey made a public appeal to his brother to come forward and help with the police investigation following the attack, and also made a series of calls to Michael, enquiring about his involvement in the incident.

Barton is a patron of the Tamsin Gulvin Fund, a charity set up to support people who have addiction problems and no financial support. Tony Adams, who had been impressed with Barton's attitude during his involvement in the Sporting Chance clinic, appointed him to this role. He is a part of the 'Get Hooked on Fishing' campaign, designed to keep children out of trouble by encouraging them to take up fishing. He has also taken part in a celebrity cricket match for charity to help fund a new children's rehabilitation unit at a hospital in Manchester. In 2011 he began writing a regular column in The Big Issue, a street newspaper sold by the homeless and vulnerably housed.

He is a good friend of the boxer Ricky Hatton and has supported him in some of his fights, and has trained with him. He is also a friend of former Oasis band member Noel Gallagher. Barton co-owns a race horse called 'Crying Lightning' (Named after the Arctic Monkeys song) with fellow football player Claudio Pizarro. In January 2011 the horse competed at the Nad Al Sheba Racecourse in Dubai.

Barton is a prominent user of Twitter, boasting one-and-a-half million followers as of May 2012. Commenting on figures from Friedrich Nietzsche and George Orwell to Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Morrissey, his eclectic tweets have resulted in him being described by the BBC as "as a philosophical sportsman to rival Eric Cantona in his heyday". Others in the media have criticised this description with Paul Hayward, chief sports writer for The Telegraph writing that Barton "manages to be patronised and held up as some kind of exemplar all at once... he is skilled at tricking us into watching him veer between the extremes of thinker and thug. Either this is a repudiation of societal hypocrisy or, more likely, indicative of a sociopathic tendency." Ellie Mae O'Hagan of The Guardian commented that "the problem, I think, is not the belief that Barton is a reformed character, but the notion that one cannot possibly be a philosopher and violent at the same time: that quoting philosophy should automatically be taken as a sign of reformation... In my mind, this all boils down to class snobbery. It is automatically assumed that Barton has violent tendencies because he's a working-class man who has chosen to play football for a living. So when he shows signs of intelligence, it's treated as a sign of reform: intellect is the preserve of the gentlemanly middle-classes."

On 28 December 2011, Barton became a father. His partner Georgia McNeil gave birth to a baby boy who was named Cassius.

In a television programme broadcast on BBC Three on 30 January 2012 Barton revealed his pro-gay rights beliefs, in discussion with presenter Amal Fashanu, daughter of John Fashanu and niece of Justin Fashanu, describing the lack of any openly gay players in English professional football as "a subject that's quite close to my heart", as his uncle is gay. He stated his belief that there would be an openly gay player "within the next 10 years" and expressed his fear that "certain managers will discriminate against people" but that he feels "more fool them, and their lack of social awareness and intelligence" and wants his generation's legacy to "help not only change the game for the better, and change the teams that they played in, but also change the culture and change the society and the football clubs that they played at.

He's also notable for his love of Manchester band The Smiths, citing Morrissey as an idol of his.