Rolf Harris

Getting it right.

It’s always tempting to be swayed by other people’s opinions, especially when everyone appears to disagree with you, but sometimes you like something so much that you don’t need anyone else’s validation. Tubeway Army’s ‘Are Friends Electric?’ was the first single that I bought back in 1979. The fact that all of my contemporaries thought Gary Numan was a laughable character did not diminish my love of his music. Similarly, my passion for Kraftwerk was a lonely experience to say the least. Now, thirty-six years later, those choices don’t seem particularly outré but from time to time I still give my twelve year old self an approving nod.

Not quite getting it right

In my early thirties I was still interested in music but also, increasingly, in politics. After the bleak years of Reagan and Thatcher (and Bush and Major) where everything just seemed to get worse, we were suddenly blasted by the sunshine of the Clinton and Blair governments. OK, so one turned out to be a philanderer and the other a war-mongerer but I still retain some admiration for the former and an irrational suspicion that the latter was possessed by the devil in 2002.

Getting it wrong

It wasn’t quite true to say that ‘Are Friends Electric?’ was the first single I bought. A few years earlier, I’d bought The Archies’ ‘Sugar Sugar’ and, around the same time, someone bought me Rolf Harris’ ‘The Court Of King Caractacus’. My love for ‘Sugar Sugar’ did not last too long but I learnt all the words to “Caractacus’ and years later would still find myself humming it and singing snatches of the lyrics.

From time to time, Harris would pop up on my radar and – those programmes about pets aside – I found I loved everything he did. Indeed, during my freelance days when I had some money in my pocket, I spent several hundred pounds on a print of one of his paintings. There was, it must be said, some derision about my choice but I knew that I loved the painting.

A couple of years ago, a gallery in Liverpool put on an exhibition of Harris’s work and I went down to see it with one of my daughters. It was absolutely brilliant and, as I was leaving and buying a poster from the shop, I got chatting to one of the people working at the gallery. They said that the exhibition had been a fantastic success, with far more visitors than they have ever anticipated, selling huge amounts from the gallery shop. Good old Rolf, I thought, about time, too.

When Harris was pulled into the investigations along with other notables from the seventies, I was sure there was some mistake. My kneejerk prejudice told me Saville and Clifford were guilty and I must confess to being mildly surprised when Davidson got off (sorry, Jim). But at least his acquittal gave me confidence things would go the same way for my beloved Rolf.

And then there was the letter. OK, I thought, maybe he’s not quite the man I thought he was, perhaps I would have to file him next to Bill Clinton.

But matters just got worse.

I’ve been wondering what I would do with this picture if it turned out he was guilty. Could I still love the picture if I didn’t love the man? Does one have to wholly approve of the artist in order to enjoy a work of art? I’m pretty confident that I could argue that no, one doesn’t. But it turns out that’s academic. I can’t look at this painting any more and this is the last time you’ll see it on my wall.