IMO Barry is not an intellectual but that doesn't mean he isn't cunning and driven. People can be smart in many different ways and it is easy to underestimate someone based on preconceived notions of what smart and successful should look like.
And we haven't seen the side of him that might actually be charming to many people. I've known someone who appears like him: a hail-fellow-well-met type, can endear himself to many people, gregarious, outgoing, fairly smart but not an intellectual, salt of the earth type.
That type of person can wrack up a lot of friends and acquaintances who always have a good word for them. The guy I knew was a salesman, a very successful one, who used your name about five times when he first met you. He never forgot someone's name, even months afterward. A guy's guy, definitely.
He always said he would give his children 'wings and roots'. Well, when things weren't always going so well on the marital front he engaged in blistering put downs of his spouse. An argument in the kitchen resulted in him taking a pot of boiling water off the stove and threatening to throw it at my friend. She still stayed with him. The last straw was when he pushed her off the verandah. Granted, it was only about three feet off the ground but it took reminding her that if they'd lived in a high rise, she'd be dead.
And sometimes family members aren't always on board with your decision to leave an individual who is verbally and physically abusive to you. As my friend's sister said to her, "that's too bad, he has the potential to be a very rich man."
Over the course of 30 years I've known four women, three of them friends, who have been in controlling, dangerous relationships. One left voluntarily (the one above), one got a reprieve when her husband was deported back to England because of charges against him. The third I ended the relationship. The last woman is actually a thread on WS. Her brother is married to the daughter of a friend of mine. She got thrown off a balcony but it wasn't three feet high.
