Barrie grew up in the South Yorkshire village of Grimethorpe, where his father worked down the local coal mine. As a child he wanted to be a cartoonist but there were few opportunities for cartoonists in Grimethorpe.

At 15 he passed the entrance examination to Barnsley Art College but dropped out to pursue his preferred cartoon illustration. A number of grim labouring jobs followed whilst he bombarded numerous publishers with pleas for work. It was while he was working as a labourer in a glass factory that he was offered a job as an art assistant for a publication owned by the Walt Disney organisation.

Barrie worked as an Art Director, book designer and children's book illustrator in Canada before moving back to the UK to freelance as a cartoonist and illustrator. Today he is mainly occupied in drawing comic strips for the Beano, book illustration and character creation for audio and visual projects.