Disgraced TV entertainer and intercourse offender Rolf Harris dies aged 93
D
isgraced entertainer and convicted intercourse offender Rolf Harris has died on the age of 93.
A press release from his household, launched by means of his solicitor on Tuesday, mentioned: “This is to confirm that Rolf Harris recently died peacefully surrounded by family and friends and has now been laid to rest.
“They ask that you respect their privacy. No further comment will be made.”
According to his dying certificates, Harris died of neck most cancers and “frailty of old age” at his house in Bray, Berkshire, on May 10.
Australian-born Harris was a household favorite within the UK for many years earlier than he was uncovered as a paedophile in June 2014, when he was convicted of 12 indecent assaults involving victims as younger as seven or eight, at London’s Southwark Crown Court.
Taking place between 1968 and 1986, they included one assault on an eight-year-old autograph hunter, two on women of their early teenagers, and a listing of abuse in opposition to his daughter’s pal that spanned 16 years.
Once a much-loved artist and musician, Harris was jailed for 5 years and 9 months.
In May 2017, he was formally cleared of 4 unconnected historic intercourse offences, which he had denied.
Rolf Harris pictured in 2012 talking to the late Queen Elizabeth II with Kylie Minogue, backstage at The Diamond Jubilee Concert
/ PALater the identical 12 months, one of many 12 indecent assault convictions was overturned by the Court of Appeal.
Harris was launched on licence from HMP Stafford on May 19, 2017, lower than three years after his sentence started.
He is known to have since lived a reclusive way of life at his house in Berkshire.
Harris was the second individual convicted underneath high-profile intercourse crime investigation Operation Yewtree – a nationwide inquiry arrange within the wake of abuse claims in opposition to late DJ and entertainer Jimmy Savile.
Harris as soon as fronted a marketing campaign warning kids concerning the risks of sexual predators, and was recognized to be related to Savile.
A former favorite of the royal household – the Queen as soon as posed for him to color her portrait – Harris had charmed thousands and thousands together with his harmless ditties, didgeridoo, genial method and talent as a painter.
His downfall shocked the leisure world and the thousands and thousands of households who adored his performances, notably as a toddler entertainer.
Sentencing Harris at Southwark Crown Court in 2014, Mr Justice Sweeney advised him: “Your reputation lies in ruins. You have been stripped of your honours and you have no-one to blame but yourself.
Harris performing on the main stage at Glastonbury music festival in 2002
/ PAIn light of his conviction, Harris was stripped of his CBE and had his 2012 Bafta fellowship removed. He also had Australian honours taken away.
He had been made an MBE in the 1960s, OBE a decade later and CBE in 2006 – the year after he painted the late queen’s 80th birthday portrait.
The decision to revoke an honour, which can be recommended by the Honours and Appointments Secretariat to the Forfeiture Committee, must be approved by the sovereign.
His death follows a reported battle with neck cancer which is said to have left the former star struggling to eat or speak.
Private investigator William Merritt, who penned book Rolf Harris: The Truth behind the Trials, previously told MailOnline that Harris was “very sick” when he final noticed him, late final 12 months.
Harris had been one of the common and versatile entertainers of his time.
His tv profession spanned greater than half a century and his Australian background and twang, together with his wobble-board invention, didgeridoo, TV sequence involving sick animals and talent to color a full canvas in an astonishingly brief time, made him a favorite amongst younger and previous.
Some of his songs, notably Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport, Sun Arise, Two Little Boys and Jake The Peg, made him one of many best-known vocalists of his period.
His talent as a painter and apparently real love of animals, typified within the vastly common BBC sequence Animal Hospital, and his ostensibly genial method, made him distinctive as a tv star.
He was born in a suburb of Perth, Western Australia, on March 30, 1930, and as an adolescent was an Australian champion swimmer.
He first got here to the United Kingdom aged 22 as an artwork pupil.
Harris together with his daughter Bindi, then aged three, at Heathrow Airport in 1967
/ PAIt was not lengthy earlier than he grew to become a well-known determine on tv, with an array of musical devices and songs, some his personal composition, others conventional.
He would additionally paint photos on massive boards in an apparently slapdash method, with the odd nonsense track thrown in, teasing the viewers together with his catchphrase: “Can you tell what it is yet?”
He recurrently appeared on tv, in common sequence equivalent to The Rolf Harris Show, which spanned three many years.
Between 1988 and 1992 he offered Rolf’s Cartoon Club, a kids’s present combining his love of artwork with exhibiting kids’s cartoons.
From 1994 to 2004 he hosted the award-winning TV programme Animal Hospital, chronicling the real-life exercise of a British veterinary observe.
Later he offered Rolf On Art, highlighting the work of a few of his favorite artists.
The programme made historical past by gaining the very best TV scores for an arts programme.
In August 2022 ITV introduced they had been engaged on a documentary that includes the testimonies of Harris’s victims and the police who had been concerned in his case.
The first episode of Rolf Harris: Hiding In Plain Sight, aired final week.