Rolf Harris

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Rolf Harris (born 30 March 1930) is an Australian entertainer whose career has included stints as a performer, composer, singer, actor, painter, and television presenter.

In 2014, he was found guilty of the sexual assault of four young girls, which effectively ended his career. "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" (a Top ten hit in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and "Jake the Peg" and his album "Two Little Boys" (which debuted in the United Kingdom) and "Jake the Peg" (which debuted in the United Kingdom) and "Jake the Peg

He used unusual equipment in his performances: he played the didgeridoo; is credited with the development of the wobble board; and is associated with the Stylophone.

Harris became a well-known television personality in the United Kingdom during the 1960s and 1970s, and later appeared on television shows such as Rolf's Cartoon Club and Animal Hospital.

He created a official portrait of Queen Elizabeth II in 2005.

Harris was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison for twelve counts of indecent assault on four teenage female victims in the 1970s and 1980s.

After serving nearly three years, he was released on licence in 2017.

He was stripped of many of the awards he had received throughout his career, including the AO and CBE, following his conviction.

Early life

Harris was born in Bassendean, Western Australia's suburb of Perth, on March 30, 1930, to Agnes Margaret (née Robbins) and Cromwell ("Crom") Harris, who both immigrated from Cardiff, Wales. He grew up in Wembley, Perth. He was named after Rolf Boldrewood, the pseudonym of an Australian writer whose mother adored. Harris was often referred to as "the boy from Bassendean" in Australia after his later fame. Buster Fleabags, a boy he owned as a child, about whom he later wrote a book (for the UK Quick Reads Initiative).

Harris studied at Bassendean State School and Perth Modern School in Subiaco, later receiving a Bachelor of Arts and a Diploma of Education from Claremont Teachers' College (now Edith Cowan University). His self-portrait in oils, which was only 16 years old and still a student at Perth Modern School, was one of the 80 works (out of 200 submitted) to be on view in the Art Gallery of New South Wales as an entry in the 1947 Archibald Prize. For the 1948 Archibald Prize, he created a portrait of then Lieutenant Governor of Western Australia, Sir James Mitchell. With his landscape "On a May Morning Guildford," he captured the 1949 Claude Hotchin prize for oil colors.

Harris, an adolescent and young adult, was a champion swimmer. He was the Australian Junior 110 meters (100 meters) Backstroke Champion in 1946. During the period from 1948 to 1952, he was the Western Australian state champion for a variety of distances and strokes.

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Career in television, music, and art

Harris moved to England in 1952 and spent a year as an art student at City and Guilds of London Art School in South London at the age of 22. He began to work in television, at the BBC, and appeared in a one-minute cartoon drawing section in a one-hour children's show called Jigsaw, with a puppet named "Fuzz" that was created and performed on magician Robert Harbin's show. In 1956, Harbin began to illustrate Harbin's Paper Magic scheme. Harris appeared on BBC Television programme Whirligig in 1954, but after each episode, he was erased.

Harris had deviated away from art school as a disillusioned student by this point. Hayward Veal, an Australian impressionist painter (1913–1968), was his mentor, showing him the basics of impressionism and showing him how it could help with his portrait painting. Harris was also entertained with his piano accordion every Thursday night at a club called the Down Under, which is popular among Australians and New Zealanders. Harris honed his entertainment abilities over the years, eventually composing what became his theme tune, "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport," which later became his name.

Although Harris was primarily on the BBC, he was also on the British ITV network, and when commercial television first became available in 1955, he was the only entertainer to work on both the BBC and ITV. Willoughby, his own invention, was on display on the BBC, where he drew Willoughby, a specially made board on which he drew Willoughby (voiced and operated by Peter Hawkins). When the character was drawn cartoons of Willoughby's antics, he would then come to life to participate in a comedic discussion with Harris. Harris created Oliver Polip the Octopus, which he drew on the back of his hand and animated on Associated Rediffusion's Small Time. Harris then illustrated the character's adventures with cartoons on large sheets of card.

Harris married Alwen Hughes, a Welsh sculptor and jeweller, in London on March 1, 1958, as both art students. They had a dog as their bridesmaid at their wedding.

After being headhunted, Harris returned to Perth, Australia, when television was first broadcasting was reinstated there in 1959. He developed and appeared in five episodes of a half-hour weekly children's show as well as his own weekly evening variety show. He appeared on TVW-7's first locally produced program, Spotlight, from 1959, and during this time, he recorded "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" on a single microphone mounted over him in the television studio.

The song was sent to EMI in Sydney, Australia, and it was released as a single immediately after, becoming both his first recording and first number one single. In the United Kingdom, the album was a hit. Harris gave four local backing musicians 10% of the royalties from the album, but they decided against taking a £7 per person recording fee because they didn't think the band would be popular. The novelty song was originally called "Kangalypso" and featured the "wobble board"'s distinctive sound.

"Let me abos go loose, Lou/Let me abos go loose/They're of no further use," became more popular, and was dropped in later versions of the song. Harris expressed regret for the original lyric in 2006, four decades after it was released.

When he wasn't doing large paintings on stage with Dulux emulsion paint at the end of 1960, he toured Australia sponsored by Dulux paints and performing his hit song. "Can you tell what it is yet?" One of his catchphrases was painting on stage. After Harris and his wife returned to England, they travelled to Perth, Australia, where he spent up to four months with his band. He and his wife had a daughter, Bindi (born 10 March 1964), named for the town of Bindi Bindi.

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 big success in the United States, and "Sun Arise," an Aboriginal-inspired song written by Harris with Perth naturalist Harry Butler. In the UK charts, the album debuted at number two. Harris joined and performed with the Beatles shortly after they began recording with Martin, and he compèred their 16-night season of Christmas shows at London's Finsbury Park Astoria Theatre (now the Rainbow Theatre) in 1963. For the first edition of the From Us to You BBC radio show in December 1963, Harris sang "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" with the Beatles backing vocals. Harris rewrote the original lyrics to produce a version that was specifically written for the Beatles.

In 1964, Harris was the host of Hi There and Hey Presto it's Rolf. He had a high profile on British television by the time The Rolf Harris Show was on television in 1967, and that on BBC1, until 1974. In the 1967 Eurovision Song Contest, he was the commentator for the United Kingdom.

In 1969, Harris introduced Jake the Peg, one of his best-known characters in the 1960s, but it wasn't until his appearance of the American Civil War song "Two Little Boys" was released in 1902. Harris later found a personal connection with the song, as it bears such resemblance to his father Crom's World War I experience and Crom's beloved younger brother Carl, who died in France two weeks before the Armistice of November 1918. In 1969, "Two Little Boys" was the Christmas Number One song in the UK charts for six weeks. It was sold over one million copies and was given a gold disc.

His BBC TV shows remained a light-entertainment staple through the 1970s and early 1980s, with Rolf's last film on Saturday evenings being seen on Saturday evenings. Harris painted pictures on large boards in an obviously slapdash style, with the odd nonsense song inserting "Can you tell what is it?" asked Harris on several of his television appearances. He painted as he painted. Only at the end of the song will a fully formed picture emerge, and often only after the board was turned through 90 or 180 degrees. Such appearances resulted in several television series based on his artistic abilities, including Rolf's Cartoon Time, broadcast on BBC One from 1979 to 1989, and Rolf's Cartoon Club. He appeared in his own weekly Australian television series, The Rolf Harris Show, produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in the early 1980s (ABC). Several guests appeared on the program, including Jane Scali, a regular. Harris will also paint Australian bush scenes on the show.

In December 1971, he was the subject of This Is Your Life, when Eamonn Andrews surprised him in New Bond Street, London, UK. In 1973, Harris gave the first concert in the newly renovated Sydney Opera House's Concert Hall. He performed autoharp on his 1974 single "Papillon" (issued by EMI), a cover of a German song for which he wrote an English lyric, rather than singing. He appeared on two albums by English pop singer Kate Bush, "The Dreaming (1982) and Aerial (2005); he also contributed vocals to the songs "An Architect's Dream" and "The Painter's Link" on Aerial. Harris appeared on This Is Your Life in September 1995, when Michael Aspel surprised him during a bagpipe parade in Edinburgh, Scotland. On two occasions, he appeared on the Australian version of the television show.

Children Can Say No! was a twenty-minute child violence prevention film released by Harris in 1985.

Harris performed his own version of "Stairway to Heaven" for Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" for the television show The Money or the Gun, which was released as a single in the United Kingdom many years ago. This cover version of the charts debuted at number seven, leading to his appearance at the Glastonbury Festival in 1993. Harris appeared at six successive Glastonbury Festivals—1998, 2000, 2002, 2009, 2010, and 2013—as well as a wobble board Harris used to perform "Stairway to Heaven" on Top of the Pops. Harris, along with Steve Lima, launched "Fine Day" in 2000, a dance album that debuted in the UK charts at that time, putting it in the "top 30" category. After the song was adopted by the club's supporters in 2003, a "Killie-themed" version of the album was supposed to be released in March 2007. One of the changed lyrics related to a hypothetical situation in which Kilmarnock might be losing the game 5–0, and the club coincidentally lost 5–1. Harris appeared on "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" with the Australian children's group the Wiggles in 2000, but after his release, he was digitally removed from DVD sets after his release.

Harris was the host of Animal Hospital, a British veterinary hospital, from 1994 to 2003. He adopted an abandoned English Bull Terrier from the sport "Dolly" during his time as host. Harris filmed 19 episodes of Animal Hospital for BBC One, and the show took home the Most Popular Factual Entertainment Show award at the National Television Awards on five occasions. According to the Radio Times, Harris finally announced that at the end of the series, it was "time to move forward."

Harris hosted Rolf on Art, a television series that showcased a collection of his favorite artists, including van Gogh, Degas, Monet, and Gauguin in 2001 and 2004. The National Gallery in London displayed a collection of Harris's works of art in November and December 2002, under Charles Saumarez Smith's direction.

Harris oversaw a campaign to recreate John Constable's The Hay Wain painting on a large scale on September 26, 2004, with 150 people contributing to a small portion. Any individual canvas was assembled into a full picture on live BBC television as part of the episode Rolf on Art: The Big Event. Harris went to Lapland in 2004 to design and paint a Christmas card for the "Children in Need" charity group, which was also in 2004.

There are three different iterations of the BBC art show Star Portraits with Rolf Harris, with the first and second series airing in 2004 and 2005, respectively. Cilla Black, Michael Parkinson, and Adrian Edmondson were among the first series, which culminated in the opening of a touring exhibition—featuring portraits of Cilla Black, Michael Parkinson, and Adrian Edmondson. County Hall Gallery arranged the exhibition. Harris had always imagined he'd be a portrait painter, as his grandfather, George Frederick Harris, had been.

For her 80th birthday, Harris was commissioned to create a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. The painting was created at Buckingham Palace and was unveiled by Harris on 19 December 2005. The painting became the subject of a special edition of Rolf on Art. Harris said in The Daily Telegraph the following year: "I was as worried as anything." I was in a funk." The portrait was later selected as the second most favored portrait of the Queen by the British public.

The Royal Australian Mint produced the first coin of the series in September 2006, and Harris was commissioned to produce the first coin of the series. On January 2007, a one-hour documentary titled A Lifetime in Paint about Harris's career as an artist—from his beginnings in Australia to the present day — was broadcast on BBC One.

Harris appeared on BBC Wales' Coming Home, in which he addressed his Welsh family history. Rolf Live!, a new DVD titled Rolf Live!, was released in December 2007, but Rolf on Art: Beatrix Potter was on BBC One during the same month. Harris appeared with a wobble board in a Churchill Insurance commercial in 2009 and hosted the satirical quiz show Have I Got News for You in May 2009. Harris was the narrator of Penguin Island, a five-part natural history documentary about the life of the little penguin. He appeared on Jamie's Dream School, teaching art to a class of 20 students, and then a public appearance on the Christmas special of My Family, which aired on December 24, 2010.

Harris appeared on the Pyramid Stage at the Glastonbury Festival on June 25, 2010, the festival's 40th anniversary, and a return to the Isle of Wight in September 2010. Harris performed at Wickham, Hampshire, on August 5th, 2011 and appeared on the Wiggles' 2011 DVD release "Unique Flea" with his wobble board, as well as on his wobble board. Harris appeared on BBC One's The Magicians in 2011, hosted by Lenny Henry. Harris wept as he talked about a period in which he felt his "life was over": "I didn't know what to do with myself" on Friday. I had no idea what to think about. I now know what people mean when they say, 'I've got clinical depression.' I'd never felt so low. There is no way out of the darkness. "I felt out of place" when I was out of control." Harris also expressed concern for missing so much of his daughter's childhood.

On BBC's The Antiques Roadshow, Harris' portrait of Bonnie Tyler was valued at £50,000 in December 2011. A major retrospective of Harris's paintings titled "Rolf Harris: Can You Tell What It Is Already?" from 19 May to August 2012. "It's been on view at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool." The first day on record brought the busiest Saturday on record, with tourist numbers hitting a record high of 3,632.

Harris appeared on The One Show on May 2, 2012, describing his artistic style as being "impressionistic." He appeared at Buckingham Palace outside Jubilee Park on June 4, 2012.

Harris began a series on Channel 5, based at Liverpool University's Veterinary School, titled Rolf's Animal Clinic. The show was initially broadcasting a repeat run at the time of his arrest by British police on suspicion of sexual assault charges and was consequently ended without giving any further information. The show, Ben Fogle's Animal Clinic, has recommissioned Harris as of August 8, 2013 and has been replaced by current BBC host Ben Fogle.

His 1992 Rolf Rules OK?

Harris is credited with inventing the wobble board, a simple handcrafted piece. Harris continued to use an array of unusual musical equipment, including the didgeridoo (the effect of which was imitated on "Sun Arise"), the Jew's harp, and then the stylophone (for which he also lent his name and image for advertising).

In 1993, Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," with didgeridoo and a wobble board, made it to the top ten in the United Kingdom. Harris performed also on "Bohemian Rhapsody" on MMM radio's Breakfast Show, as the recording was released on the first Musical Challenge compilation album in 2000). During the Christmas season, Harris also recorded "Six White Boomers," about a joey kangaroo trying to locate his mother during the holiday season. Santa Claus used six large male kangaroos ("boomers") instead of reindeer in the song. Harris announced in October 2008 that he would re-record his hit 1969 song "Two Little Boys," backed by North Wales' Froncysyllte Male Voice Choir, on the 90th anniversary of World War II's war. The Poppy Appeal received funds from the sale. After being inspired to make the film after appearing in My Family at War, a short collection of activities that aired on the BBC during the "Remembrance" season, which was broadcast in November 2008. He discovered that the lives of his father and uncle during the Great War resembled the songs' lyrics.

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