Background and career
Rolf Harris (30 March 1930 – 10 May 2023) was an Australian musician, television personality, painter, and actor. He used a variety of instruments in his performances, notably the didgeridoo and the Stylophone, and is credited with the invention of the wobble board. He was convicted in England in 2014 of the sexual assault of four underage girls. Harris began his entertainment career in 1953, releasing several songs, including "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" (a Top 10 hit in Australia, the UK and the United States), "Sun Arise", "Jake the Peg" and "Two Little Boys", which reached number 1 in the UK. From the 1960s, Harris was a successful television personality in the UK, later presenting shows such as Rolf's Cartoon Club and Animal Hospital. In 1985, he hosted the short educational film Kids Can Say No!, which warned children between ages five and eight how to avoid situations where they might be sexually abused, how to escape such situations and how to get help if they are abused. In 2005, he painted an official portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. After the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal, Harris was arrested as part of the Operation Yewtree police investigation regarding historical allegations of sexual offences in 2013. Harris denied any wrongdoing and was placed on trial in 2014. In July 2014, Harris was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison after being convicted on twelve counts of indecent assault on four female victims, who were between the ages of eight and nineteen at the time that the offences took place between the 1960s and 1980s. Following his conviction, he was stripped of many of his honours and re-runs of his television programmes were pulled from syndication. Harris was released on licence in 2017 after serving nearly three years at HM Prison Stafford. The conviction involving an eight-year-old girl in Portsmouth was overturned as unsafe in 2017. He applied for permission to appeal against his convictions concerning the three other girls, but this was refused.
Harris was born on 30 March 1930 in Bassendean, a suburb of Perth, Western Australia, to Agnes Margaret (née Robbins) and Cromwell ("Crom") Harris, who had both emigrated from Cardiff, Wales. He was named after Rolf Boldrewood, the pseudonym of an Australian writer whom his mother admired. After his later fame, Harris was often referred to within Australia as "the boy from Bassendean". As a child, he owned a dog called Buster Fleabags, about whom he later wrote a book (for the UK Quick Reads Initiative). Harris attended Bassendean Primary School and Perth Modern School in Subiaco, later gaining a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Western Australia and a Diploma of Education from Claremont Teachers' College. When he was 16, and still a student at Perth Modern School, his self-portrait in oils was one of the 80 works (out of 200 submitted) accepted to be hung in the Art Gallery of New South Wales as an entry in the 1947 Archibald Prize. He painted a portrait of the then Lieutenant Governor of Western Australia, Sir James Mitchell, for the 1948 Archibald Prize. He won the 1949 Claude Hotchin prize for oil colours with his landscape "On a May Morning, Guildford". As an adolescent and young adult, Harris was a champion swimmer. In 1946, he was the Australian Junior 110 yards (100 metres) Backstroke Champion. He was also the Western Australian state champion over a variety of distances and strokes during the period from 1948 to 1952.
Harris moved to England in 1952 and became an art student at City and Guilds of London Art School in South London, aged 22. He went on to illustrate Paper Magic, Harbin's first book on origami, in 1956. In 1954, Harris was a regular on BBC Television programme Whirligig, which featured a character called "Willoughby", who sprang to life on a drawing board, but was erased at the end of each episode. By this stage, Harris had drifted away from art school as a slightly disillusioned student. He then met his longtime hero, Australian impressionist painter Hayward Veal (1913–1968), who became his mentor, teaching him the rudiments of impressionism and showing him how it could help with his portrait painting. At the time that he was working with Veal, Harris was also entertaining with his piano accordion every Thursday night at a club called the Down Under, frequented by Australians and New Zealanders. At the Down Under venue, Harris honed his entertainment skills over several years, eventually writing what later became his theme song, "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport". Although Harris chiefly appeared on the BBC, he was also on the British ITV network, and when commercial television started in 1955, he was the only entertainer to work with both the BBC and ITV. He performed on the BBC with his own creation, Willoughby, a specially made board on which he drew Willoughby (voiced and operated by Peter Hawkins). The character would then come to life to engage in a comedic dialogue with Harris as he drew cartoons of Willoughby's antics. On Associated Rediffusion's Small Time, Harris invented a character called Oliver Polip the Octopus, which he drew on the back of his hand and animated. Harris then illustrated the character's adventures with cartoons on huge sheets of card. Harris returned to Perth in Australia when television was introduced there in 1959 after he was headhunted. He subsequently produced and starred in five episodes of a half-hour weekly children's show, as well as his own weekly evening variety show. From 1959, he worked on TVW-7's first locally produced show, Spotlight, and during this time he recorded "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" on a single microphone placed above him in the television studio. The song was sent to EMI in Sydney, and was released shortly afterwards as a record, becoming both his first recording and his first number one single. The song was successful in the UK. Harris offered four local backing musicians to split 10% of the royalties from the song, but they decided to take a recording fee of £7 each (equivalent to A$233 in 2022), because they did not think the song would be successful. The novelty song was originally titled "Kangalypso" and featured the distinctive sound of the "wobble board". The fourth verse – "Let me abos go loose, Lou/Let me abos go loose/They're of no further use, Lou/So let me abos go loose" – became increasingly controversial, because of the use of what later became regarded as a racial slur, and was removed in later versions of the song. In 2006, four decades after the song's release, Harris expressed his regret about the original lyric.
At the end of 1960, he toured Australia sponsored by Dulux paints and singing his hit song while doing huge paintings on stage with Dulux emulsion paint. While painting on stage, one of his catchphrases was, "Can you tell what it is yet?" After Harris and his wife returned to England, they visited Perth to meet family and for tours of Australia, where he spent around four months travelling with his band. After returning to the UK in 1962, he was introduced to George Martin, who re-recorded all of his songs the following year, including a remake of "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" which became a huge hit in the US, and "Sun Arise", an Aboriginal-inspired song Harris had written with Perth naturalist Harry Butler. The song reached number two in the UK charts. Harris met and worked with the Beatles after they started recording with Martin, and he compèred their 16-night season of Christmas shows at London's Finsbury Park Astoria Theatre (later the Rainbow Theatre) in 1963. Harris sang "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport", with the Beatles singing backing vocals, for the first edition of the From Us to You BBC radio show in December 1963. Harris changed the original lyrics to create a version that was specially written for the Beatles. Harris was the presenter of Hi There and Hey Presto it's Rolf in 1964. By the time The Rolf Harris Show was broadcast in 1967, lasting until 1974, on BBC1, he had gained a high profile on British television. He was the commentator for the United Kingdom in the 1967 Eurovision Song Contest. In March 1967, David Blanasi, an Aboriginal Australian virtuoso player and maker of the didgeridoo, travelled to London with Harris, appearing live on The Rolf Harris Show on Saturday 1 April for the first time. Blanasi taught Harris how to play the didgeridoo while on tour with him, which began an ongoing professional association. Harris created one of his best-known characters in the 1960s, Jake the Peg, but his biggest success in terms of record sales was in 1969, with his rendering of the American Civil War song "Two Little Boys", originally written in 1902. Harris later discovered a personal poignancy to the song, as the story bears such a resemblance to the World War I experiences of his father Crom, and Crom's beloved younger brother Carl, who died aged 19 after being wounded in battle in France two weeks before the Armistice of November 1918. "Two Little Boys" was the Christmas Number One song in the UK charts for six weeks in 1969. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, his BBC TV programmes remained a light-entertainment staple, with the last show, Rolf on Saturday OK?, broadcast on Saturday evenings. On many of his television appearances, Harris painted pictures on large boards in an apparently slapdash manner, with the odd nonsense song thrown in, asking "Can you tell what is it yet?" as he painted. Only at the end of the song would a fully formed picture emerge, sometimes only after the board was turned through 90 or 180 degrees. Such appearances led to several television series based on his artistic ability, such as Rolf's Cartoon Time, broadcast on BBC One from 1979 to 1989, and Rolf's Cartoon Club, on CITV between 1989 and 1993. In the early 1980s, he starred in his own weekly Australian television series, The Rolf Harris Show, produced by the ABC Television. The series featured numerous guests, including regulars such as Jane Scali. During the show, Harris would also paint Australian bush scenes. Harris was the subject of episodes of This Is Your Life in 1971 and 1995. In 1973, Harris performed the first concert in the Concert Hall of the newly completed Sydney Opera House. In 1974, he released the single "Papillon" on EMI. He played the didgeridoo on two albums by English pop singer Kate Bush, entitled The Dreaming (1982) and Aerial (2005); he also contributed vocals to the songs "An Architect's Dream" and "The Painter's Link" on Aerial. In 1985, Harris presented a twenty-minute child abuse prevention video called Kids Can Say No!
In the late 1980s, Harris was touring in Australia and was asked to sing his own version of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" for the television programme The Money or the Gun performing with his own small group; a version was released as a single in the UK in February 1993. This cover version reached number seven in the charts, which led to his appearance at the Glastonbury Festival in 1993. Harris appeared at six subsequent Glastonbury festivals—1998, 2000, 2002, 2009, 2010 and 2013—and a wobble board Harris used to perform "Stairway to Heaven" on Top of the Pops is an exhibit at the National Museum of Australia. In 2000, Harris, along with Steve Lima, released a dance track called "Fine Day", which entered the "top 30" in the UK charts at that time. A "Killie-themed" version of the song was scheduled for release in March 2007, to coincide with the Scottish football club Kilmarnock's appearance in the Scottish League Cup final after the song was adopted by the club's fans in 2003. One of the adapted lyrics referred to a hypothetical situation, in which Kilmarnock could be losing the match 5–0, and the club coincidentally lost 5–1. Harris performed "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" in 2000 with the Australian children's group the Wiggles; he was subsequently digitally removed from DVD releases after his conviction. From 1994 to 2003, Harris was the host of the reality television programme Animal Hospital, a chronicle of a British veterinary practice. During his time hosting the series, he adopted an abandoned English Bull Terrier from the practice named "Dolly". Harris presented 19 series of Animal Hospital for BBC One and the show won the Most Popular Factual Entertainment Show award at the National TV Awards on five occasions. Harris eventually announced that it was "time to move on" at the completion of the series, which broke "the hearts of thousands of fans across the country", according to the Radio Times. In 2001 and 2004, Harris presented Rolf on Art, a television series that highlighted the work of a selection of his favourite artists, including van Gogh, Degas, Monet and Gauguin. In November and December 2002, under the direction of Charles Saumarez Smith, London's National Gallery exhibited a collection of Harris's art. On 26 September 2004, Harris oversaw a project to recreate John Constable's The Hay Wain painting on a large scale, with 150 people each contributing a small section. On live BBC television, each individual canvas was assembled into the full picture as part of the episode Rolf on Art: The Big Event. Also in 2004, as a part of the Rolf on Art series, Harris travelled to Lapland to design and paint a Christmas card for the "Children in Need" charity organisation. Harris presented three series of the BBC art programme Star Portraits with Rolf Harris, with the first and second series airing in 2004 and 2005, respectively. Following the first series, a touring exhibition—featuring portraits of Cilla Black, Michael Parkinson and Adrian Edmondson—was organised with County Hall Gallery. In 2001, Harris had said he always imagined he would eventually become a portrait painter as his paternal grandfather, George Frederick Harris, had been. Harris was commissioned to paint a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II for her 80th birthday. The painting was conducted at Buckingham Palace and was unveiled there by Harris on 19 December 2005. The painting also became the subject of a special episode of Rolf on Art. Harris explained to The Daily Telegraph the following year: "I was as nervous as anything. I was in a panic". The portrait was later voted as the second-most-favoured portrait of the Queen by the British public. In September 2006, the Royal Australian Mint launched the first of the new 2007 Silver Kangaroo Collector's Coin series and Harris was commissioned to design the first coin of the series. In January 2007, a one-hour documentary titled A Lifetime in Paint, about Harris's work as an artist—from his early years in Australia to the present day—was screened on BBC One.
In 2007, Harris participated in the BBC Wales programme Coming Home, in which he discussed his Welsh family history. In December 2007, a new DVD, titled Rolf Live!, was released through his website, while Rolf on Art: Beatrix Potter was screened on BBC One during the same month. Harris appeared with a wobble board in a Churchill Insurance advertisement in 2009, and hosted the satirical quiz show Have I Got News for You in May 2009. Harris was narrator of the 2010 Australian documentary series Penguin Island, a six-part natural history documentary about the life of the little penguin. From September 2010 to October 2010, he took part in Jamie's Dream School, teaching art to a class of 20 students, followed by an appearance as himself on the Christmas special of My Family, which aired on 24 December 2010. Harris performed on the Pyramid Stage at the Glastonbury Festival on 25 June 2010, during the festival's 40th birthday, followed by an appearance at the Bestival Festival on the Isle of Wight in September 2010. On 5 August 2011, Harris played at Wickham Festival in Wickham, Hampshire, and also appeared on the Wiggles' 2011 DVD release Ukulele Baby, singing and performing the song "Good Ship Fabulous Flea" with his wobble board. In 2011, Harris made a guest appearance on BBC One's The Magicians, hosted by Lenny Henry. On 5 November 2011, Harris appeared in an episode of Piers Morgan's Life Stories, in which he wept as he spoke about a period in which he felt his "life was over": "I didn't know what to do with myself. I didn't know what to think. I now know what people mean when they say, 'I've got clinical depression.' I'd never felt so low. There's no way to come out of the blackness. I felt out of control". Harris also stated that he regrets missing so much of his daughter's childhood. In December 2011, Harris's portrait of Bonnie Tyler was valued at an estimated £50,000 on BBC's The Antiques Roadshow. From 19 May to 12 August 2012, a major retrospective of Harris's paintings, titled "Rolf Harris: Can You Tell What It Is Yet?", was exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. The opening day yielded the busiest Saturday on record, with visitor figures peaking at 3,632. On 2 May 2012, Harris appeared on The One Show, in which he described his artistic style as being "impressionistic". On 4 June 2012, he performed at the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Concert outside Buckingham Palace. In October 2012, Harris started presenting a series on Channel 5, based at Liverpool University's Veterinary School, called Rolf's Animal Clinic. At the time of his arrest by British police on suspicion of sexual offences, the show was broadcasting a repeat run and was consequently ceased without any details of its future. In 2013, Channel 5 replaced Harris with former BBC host Ben Fogle and recommissioned the show under the title 'Ben Fogle's Animal Clinic'.
