Barbara Kirk is the mother of Paddy and Colin Kirk.
Barbara was a very controlling mother, and always disapproved of Paddy's friends and choices.
Barbara first appears in the village to meet Mandy Dingle and the Dingles. She takes an instant disliking to them is deeply unhappy that her son Paddy has got involved with them. She tries to set him up with family friend Jane Barnet instead. It doesn't work, and eventually Barbara offers to pay Mandy to marry someone else. At the time, the Dingles were trying to raise the money to buy Wishing Well Cottage, so Mandy eventually decided to marry her cousin Butch. When Paddy found out what his mother had done, he disowned her.
Eventually Paddy and Mandy decided to get back together and get engaged, so, in an effort to split them up and regain her relationship with her son, Barbara pretended to be very ill, even getting a fake doctor to tell Paddy she only had 6 months left to live. Eventually, Mandy finds out that Barbara isn't ill when she spots her on a bike at a gym.
In 1999, Paddy and Mandy marry. When the marriage collapses, she is there to tell him that she told him so.
In 2002, Barbara makes it known that she doesn't approve of Emily Dingle and when they both stand up to her, she departs but continues to plague them with phone calls. Emily later gets a call saying that she is ill but Paddy dismisses it as her crying wolf again. To celebrate their engagement, they plan to go to Ireland on holiday and he decides to visit his mother beforehand. On arrival at her house, she was nowhere to be found and is later informed by his cousin, Jason that she had died. Pills were found near the body and Paddy believed that she had committed suicide until a coroner's report said it was natural causes. Paddy blamed Emily for thinking it was his fault that his mother had died and this put a strain on their relationship.
In January 2019, Mandy returned to the village to deliver a letter she had found behind a photo frame, addressed to Barbara from a lover in September 1968, suggesting that Kenneth Kirk may not be Paddy's biological father. This lover was Bear Wolf, a local wrestler. Bear was confirmed to be Paddy's biological father when Paddy took a DNA test.