Rolf Harris is dead

Shame there is no hell to torment him !

We chucked all our kids' Animal Hospital books in the bin when the revelations came to light. Felt very betrayed and sickened.

It’s awful that this thread is still going.

Years ago a young acquaintance was tasked with driving Rolf Harris to a theatre where he was performing. He said Harris kept up a stream of filthy jokes the whole way and was abusively rude to the band at the theatre. He found him a very unpleasant person..

Glad he's gone, horrible man x

MerylStreep

Sassanach512

Didn't he do a teach young kids to swim show years ago? It looked innocent at the time but it makes you wonder if it was another excuse to touch up youngsters in the water.

He also toured schools educating children in how to be aware of inappropriate touching. He was pure evil 😡

😲

That is manipulation in the extreme!

Sassanach512

Didn't he do a teach young kids to swim show years ago? It looked innocent at the time but it makes you wonder if it was another excuse to touch up youngsters in the water.

He also toured schools educating children in how to be aware of inappropriate touching. He was pure evil 😡

LovelyLady
Have you heard Venessa Feltz taking about her horrible experience while interviewing him on The Big Breakfast.
Those interviews were conducted on a bed.
His wife was less than 2’ away while Rolf Harris had his hand at her knicker line. His wife saw everything.

Couldn't agree more. Good riddance to bad rubbish. I really feel for all his victims.

Didn't he do a teach young kids to swim show years ago? It looked innocent at the time but it makes you wonder if it was another excuse to touch up youngsters in the water.

I used to like him when I was young with his wobbling washboard and tie me kangaroo down ,sport. I was very shocked to hear about his disgusting behaviour and at first I wondered if someone was out to frame him and /or get money out of him. He certainly didn’t seem creepy like Savile and Glitter but then many paedophiles don’t, do they ?

I was born in 1960 and as a very small child , pre school age if RH came on the radio I would go into a complete meltdown! Screaming and crying. I was so scared of him . He would have to be switched off .
My family all thought this was very strange as he was so popular but I think I knew instinctively he was a wrong un .

Paedophiles live normal lives, often are pillars of the community, on TV maybe, or could be family or a friendly neighbour, but behind closed doors they are very different.
So hearing friends of these people saying they couldn’t possibly do such a thing as they are lovely people.....etc etc means nothing because paedophiles manipulate and deceive.

I met him many years ago at a dinner. He was very nice and he and I got into conversation about Indian fabrics and where you could buy it. He also visited a school near us and did one of his Rolf art demonstrations. He donated the picture to the school. He was great fun. It was interesting that The Telegraph, yesterday had a long obituary about his life and career but hardly mentioned his arrest, only in passing.

I was also shocked when he was found guilty. I thought that this can’t be true.
I’m so very sad his family had to live through this.
I didn’t follow the case but it was so unexpected to me. I saw him often in the art shop in town. I never spoke with him or acknowledged his presence.
May he rest in peace.

I recall in the 80s when I had to go and get RH to be interviewed at the Motor Show. I was ahead of him when he grabbed my bum. I couldn't quite believe it! It certainly changed my view of him.

People must have known and said nothing.

Sad that a convicted criminal gets so much press time….front page news…..abysmal.

Yet another name added to the long list of "idols with feet of clay". It also adds to the long-lasting and largely unresolved debate as to whether or not an artist's personal failings or even despicable sins, once revealed, then somehow devalue the artistic merit of their work. I suspect that there is most certainly a negative reassessment in the short term, but as time passes, perhaps the sins fade somewhat, as the art reasserts its intrinsic appeal. Examples from history are Wagner, champion of the Aryan master race myth; Caravaggio, a pimp and a murderer; Cellini, a multiple murderer; Picasso, a receiver of ancient Iberian statues stolen from the Louvre, and also a raging misogynist; Francis Bacon, allegedly a life-long sexual predator and sado-masochist; Gaugin, paedophile who left his wife and children destitute to travel to Tahiti, where he took three child brides, two aged 14 and one aged 13, and gave all of them syphilis; Percy Grainger, Australian composer, white supremacist and anti-Semite; Degas, rabid racist and anti-Semite; and those are just a few of the many famous names whose art continues to sell for multi-millions. As for Rolf Harris, yes, despicable crimes, but perhaps rather small beer in terms of his contribution to "the arts". Can't imagine that many will be that interested in any future rehabilitation of his work.

Interfere with 1 child or 50, they are still monsters and deserve to be jailed for life (IMO).

No degrees of pedophilia, no degrees of being a domestic abuser, any victim is one too many, but we might all think that someone who ends up murdering his wife might have a priority first class ticket to hell and a special place full of whatever torment awaits him.
RH was unrepentent, he reckons he was hard done by. His victims would still be scarred for life if he'd repented of his actions spontaneously and we'll no way to make recompense, but the b***d was found guilty and even then showed no remorse or understanding
As for censoring of music or art or films....
I don't think any of his songs will go down in the annals of great music never to be forgotten to be honest. How many old. Music hall songs are regularly sung nowadays, including ones that are much better than his
How far do we go with censorship of works which have a life of their own away from the person who created them. Picasso was vile towards most of the women his life for example. How do we know that many of the great artists and composers and writers both in recent and more distant ages never did things like he did or were rapists or abusers. Or even serial adulterers. There is a line to be drawn obviously and it would. Be different in each situation. If you were Jewish you'd not want to play music by known antisemites such as Wagner, there are lots of other works by other composers. Eric Gill, let's not boycott a typeface just cost he did what he did, rename it, let his name become a footnote in the history of the typeface. I personally can appreciate his artwork but would not for example if there was one visit a museum dedicated to him. I recently went to an exhibition which had a work by him and was able to look on it as an artwork, for me it is just far enough in the past to be able to do that. I think you have to remember what happened so you don't end up inadvertently glorifying wronguns in years to come. The colston statue was put up many years after his death by people who only remembered his philanthropy not how he a massed his wealth for example. The hall was so called in tribute to him, so must be renamed, that sort of thing
History is very important, and we should draw lessons from it. Hopefully nowadays with safeguarding being taken more seriously there will be no more such pedophiles coming along. There may be some yet undiscovered obviously and I hope that they are brought to justice.

He lived not far from me when I was a child and used the local Catholic Church! Little didn’t we know what a sinner he was!!
Why oh why when someone like this trundles off down below, hopefully, do they give him so much airspace!!

A relative of mine lived for some time in Scarborough - Savile also had a home there and was linked to a businessman, also from the area.

I can remember her daughter looking for a Saturday job and being offered one by the business owner - a number of people living locally warned her not to allow this and to keep her away from this particular man and Savile - this was in the 80's.

It's not only the crimes that horrify, it's those who were complicit....they allowed it and I hope they suffer for what they did.

No matter how good he was as an entertainer, just damaging one child is enough for me to say I am glad he is dead. You can seem like a nice person and be completely depraved. As some will know, I have a member of family in prison at the moment for abusing a child and he was over 80 when it came out. I can't bear to see a picture of him let alone give him his familial title; neither can anyone else in our family except his wife who believes he is a good man who made a bad mistake. Personally I think she is completely deluded and I agree with silverlining48 that paedophiles don't just start offending later in life so I dread to think what could crawl out of the woodwork.
A perpetrator doesn't just ruin the lives of the children they abuse (although they are the hardest hit) but it destroys the lives of their parents and wider family. You start to look back at the times you have allowed your small children to be with them and realise that the apparent interest in them was so much darker than you thought. It is quite horrible. No, there is no hierarchy with paedophilia.

I wouldn’t remove the Gill statue or ban Wagner operas. Once we start editing art, music etc according to the private lives of the artists we will be left with a greatly impoverished art scene. We may not approve of their private lives, but sometimes they hold the key to understanding the art, though sometimes they are so separate as to be irrelevant.