| “ | You work with a person long enough you get as goofy as he is! | „ |
| ~ Barney Fife |
Bernard "Barney" P. Milton Oliver Fife is the secondary protagonist on The Andy Griffith Show, as a regular character on the first five seasons then as a guest character on the remaining three seasons.
He was portrayed by the late Don Knotts.
One of Andy Taylor's cousins, Fife was hired by Andy to be his deputy sheriff in the small, sleepy North Carolina community of Mayberry. Mostly in later seasons they kind of dropped that Barney and Andy are cousins. Barney and Andy are childhood buddies. He was high strung and often overzealous in the performance of his duties, one time arresting nearly everyone in town while Andy was away. Mostly he is usually incompetent deputy, Andy and Barney are like a comedy duo like Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis,
Many of his captures of wanted fugitives were by accident. Also Fife was quite inept with a gun, leading to a number of misfires. Andy would later make him keep his weapon unloaded, and carry a single bullet in his shirt pocket for emergencies, but that bullet would invariably find its way into the gun and then be misfired.
In the mid 60s Barney took a position as a detective in the Raliegh police force. He would work there for a number of years until moving back to Mayberry by the mid 1980s. For a time he served as acting sheriff. Fife finally married his long time girlfriend Thelma Lou and endorsed the returning Andy Taylor in the Mayberry Sheriff's election. Andy won the election easily and Fife reprised his role of being Andy's loyal deputy.