His television roles included the police drama The Odd Man, the sitcom Duty Free, and Gregory Wilmot in Upstairs, Downstairs.

Born in Mexborough in South Yorkshire,[note 1] Barron completed his national service in the Royal Air Force[1] and his acting career started at the Sheffield Repertory Theatre, where he worked with a young Patrick Stewart and also met his wife, Mary, a stage designer.

[2] He became well known to British television viewers in the early 1960s as the easygoing Detective Sergeant Swift in the Granada TV series The Odd Man and its spin-off.

Barron made many one-off television appearances, from Redcap and Z-Cars in the mid-1960s, to Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), Strange Report, The New Avengers, Thriller, The Professionals, Foyle's War, and A Touch of Frost.

In 1989 he starred on television in a story of relationships in a new town in the Midlands entitled Take Me Home, with Annette Crosbie as his wife and Maggie O'Neill as his girlfriend.

[9][7] He lived in the Surrey town of East Molesey, a short distance from Hampton Court Palace and had a second home in St Ives, Cornwall.