Many, many years ago, ‘when there were wolves in Wales’, as Dylan Thomas once wrote, I spent a pleasant half hour in conversation with Rolf Harris. It seems a good thing, in retrospect, that I wasn’t a budding teen girl or the old pervert might have wanted more than chat from me.
Australia-born Harris has resided in the UK for many years and there he became quite the darling. He’s a charming man, and I can attest to that. Highly creative, a songwriter, singer of such ditties as Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport and Six White Boomers, among many others, and was also a very fine artist who even painted a portrait of the Queen a few years ago – the Royals were big fans – and was a mainstay on Brit game shows and chat shows.
And as the hideousness of his double life emerged during a lengthy trial, he had a marked propensity to venture inside the panties of prepubescent and pubescent girls. Many of these ‘adventures’ took place in his own home and one cannot help but wonder what the dynamic was in the household — “Daddy’s a pervert, but we don’t talk about that” — since the missus and his daughter, Bindi, stood steadfastly on his side during the trial.
The man is now 84-years-old and has been sentenced to five-and-a-half-years imprisonment. If he serves his full sentence it’s unlikely he’ll be around on this planet to violate any other young women.
Yet, when I met him, backstage at the old Cave Supper Club in Vancouver (the photo, left, shows pretty much what he looked like in those days), the man epitomized charm and graciousness. None of this “I’m a star” kind of shit, but genuinely chatty and, well, nice. He was quite a favorite in Vancouver, was old Rolf, and he even wrote a song called Vancouver Town in testament to his briefly adopted city. The song is funny, and satirical as hell and you can find it if you Google it, but all things considered, I think I’ll remove it from my song list.
That latter point ties in with the fact I have zero-tolerance for paedophilia. It is inexcusable for an adult to violate the innocence of a child to satisfy his or her own vile ‘needs’ and I can be driven to the point of thinking hanging is too good for those people.
So, if all the findings about Rolf were true, then may he rot in the joint and I don’t think I will name drop about him further.
And I still think so 