Tony Barrell has been making features and documentaries for ABC radio and television for more than 20 years. He began his career with Double Jay, has been a producer for Background Briefing and Foreign Correspondent and a reporter with Four Corners. He has made radio documentaries in and about the USA, Europe, and several Asian countries, including four series in collaboration with the BBC World Service. His 1995 Tokyo's Burning, the story of the firebombing of the Japanese capital in March 1945, won a Prix Italia.

He is a founder producer of both Radio Eye and the Night Air and has made made three co-production series for Radio National and the BBC World Service travelling through Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and in 2004, the Russian Far East (the subject of his book, The Real Far East). In 2005, for Hindsight, he produced Remembering Eveleigh, the story of the NSW railway workshops, and, for Street Stories, Single at Sixty (published in 2007 by ABC Books). His excursion to the Russian Far East was published as a book by Scribe in 2006.

In 1993 he produced a radio documentary about the near-demise of the Sydney Swans – Cheers. Tony is a dedicated follower of the Australian game which he came to know after migrating from the UK.