Rolf Harris facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Rolf Harris
Harris in November 2010
Born	(1930-03-30)30 March 1930 Bassendean, Western Australia
Died	10 May 2023(2023-05-10) (aged 93) Bray, Berkshire, England
Cause of death	Neck cancer
Alma mater	University of Western Australia Claremont Teachers' College
Occupation	Musician singer-songwriter composer comedian television personality presenter actor broadcaster painter
Years active	1953–2013
Spouse(s)	Alwen Hughes ​ (m. 1958)​
Children	1

Rolf Harris (30 March 1930 – 10 May 2023) was an Australian entertainer, musician, singer-songwriter, composer, comedian, actor, painter and television personality. He often used unusual instruments in his performances: he played the didgeridoo and the stylophone and is credited with the invention of the wobble board.

As a teenager, Harris was a champion swimmer. He began his career in television, music, and art in the 1950s, releasing several songs including "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" (a Top 10 hit in Australia, the UK, and the US), "Jake the Peg", and his recording of "Two Little Boys" (which reached number 1 in the UK). During the 1960s and 1970s, Harris became a successful television personality in the UK, later presenting shows such as Rolf's Cartoon Club and Animal Hospital. In 1985, he hosted the short educational film Kids Can Say No!. In 2005, Harris painted an official portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. He lived in Bray, Berkshire, England, for more than six decades.

In July 2014, at the age of 84, Harris was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison. He was released on licence in 2017 after serving nearly three years at HM Prison Stafford. Following his conviction, Harris was stripped of many of the honours that he had been awarded during his career, and reruns of television programs featuring Harris were pulled from syndication.

Early life

At 14, he swam the fastest time, swimming from scratch, in the "Swim through Bassendean" handicap race, 27 January 1945.

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

Harris attended Bassendean State School and Perth Modern School in Subiaco, later gaining a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Western Australia and a Diploma of Education from Claremont Teachers' College (now Edith Cowan University). While he was just 16, and still a student at Perth Modern School, his self-portrait in oils was one of the 80 works (out of 200 submitted) accepted to be hung in the Art Gallery of New South Wales as an entry in the 1947 Archibald Prize. He painted a portrait of the then Lieutenant Governor of Western Australia, Sir James Mitchell, for the 1948 Archibald Prize. He won the 1949 Claude Hotchin prize for oil colours with his landscape "On a May Morning, Guildford".

As an adolescent and young adult Harris was a champion swimmer. In 1946, he was the Australian Junior 110 yards (100 metres) Backstroke Champion. He was also the Western Australian state champion over a variety of distances and strokes during the period from 1948 to 1952.

Career in television, music, and art

1950s

Harris moved to England in 1952 and became an art student at City and Guilds of London Art School in South London, at the age of 22. In 1953 he found work in television, at the BBC, performing a regular ten-minute cartoon drawing section in a one-hour children's show called Jigsaw, with a puppet called "Fuzz", made and operated on the show by magician Robert Harbin. He went on to illustrate Harbin's Paper Magic programme in 1956. In 1954, Harris was a regular on a BBC Television programme Whirligig, which featured a character called "Willoughby", who sprang to life on a drawing board, but was erased at the end of each episode.

By this stage, Harris had drifted away from art school as a slightly disillusioned student. He then met his longtime hero, Australian impressionist painter Hayward Veal (1913–1968), who became his mentor, teaching him the rudiments of impressionism and showing him how it could help with his portrait painting. At the time that he was working with Veal, Harris was also entertaining with his piano accordion every Thursday night at a club called the Down Under, frequented by Australians and New Zealanders. At the Down Under venue Harris honed his entertainment skills over several years, eventually writing what later became his theme song, "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport".

Although Harris chiefly appeared on the BBC, he was also on the British ITV network, and when commercial television started in 1955, he was the only entertainer to work with both the BBC and ITV. He performed on the BBC with his own creation, Willoughby, a specially made board on which he drew Willoughby (voiced and operated by Peter Hawkins). The character would then come to life to engage in a comedic dialogue with Harris as he drew cartoons of Willoughby's antics. On Associated Rediffusion's Small Time, Harris invented a character called Oliver Polip the Octopus, which he drew on the back of his hand and animated. Harris then illustrated the character's adventures with cartoons on huge sheets of card.

On 1 March 1958, in London, Harris married Alwen Hughes, a Welsh sculptor and jeweller, while they were both art students. At their wedding, they had a dog as bridesmaid.

Harris returned to Perth in Australia when television was introduced there in 1959 after he was headhunted. He subsequently produced and starred in five episodes of a half-hour weekly children's show, as well as his own weekly evening variety show. From 1959, he worked on TVW-7's first locally produced show, Spotlight, and during this time he recorded "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" on a single microphone placed above him in the television studio.

The song was sent to EMI in Sydney, Australia, and was released shortly afterwards as a record, becoming both his first recording and his first number one single. The song was successful in the UK. Harris offered four local backing musicians 10% of the royalties from the song, but they decided to take a recording fee of £7 each, because they did not think the song would be successful. The novelty song was originally titled "Kangalypso" and featured the distinctive sound of the "wobble board".

The fourth verse – "Let me abos go loose, Lou/Let me abos go loose/They're of no further use, Lou/So let me abos go loose" – became increasingly controversial, because of the use of what later became regarded as a racial slur, and was removed in later versions of the song. In 2006, four decades after the song's release, Harris expressed his regret about the original lyric.

1960s to 1980s

At the end of 1960, he toured Australia sponsored by Dulux paints and singing his hit song whilst doing huge paintings on stage with Dulux emulsion paint. While painting on stage, one of his catchphrases was, "Can you tell what it is yet?" After Harris and his wife returned to England, they visited Perth to meet family and for tours of Australia, where he spent as much as four months travelling with his band. In 1964, he and his wife had a daughter, Bindi (born 10 March 1964), named for the town of Bindi Bindi.

After returning to the UK in 1962, 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 huge hit in the US, and "Sun Arise", an Aboriginal-inspired song Harris had written with Perth naturalist Harry Butler. The song reached number two in the UK charts. Harris met and worked with the Beatles after they started 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. Harris sang "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport", with the Beatles singing backing vocals, for the first edition of the From Us to You BBC radio show in December 1963. Harris changed the original lyrics to create a version that was specially written for the Beatles.

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

Harris created one of his best known characters in the 1960s, Jake the Peg, but his biggest success in terms of record sales was in 1969, with his rendering of the American Civil War song "Two Little Boys", originally written in 1902. Harris later discovered a personal poignancy to the song, as the story bears such a resemblance to the World War I experiences of his father Crom, and Crom's beloved younger brother Carl, who died at the age of 19 after being wounded in battle in France two weeks before the Armistice of November 1918. "Two Little Boys" was the Christmas Number One song in the UK charts for six weeks in 1969. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc.

Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, his BBC TV programmes remained a light-entertainment staple, with the last show, Rolf on Saturday OK?, broadcast on Saturday evenings. On many of his television appearances, Harris painted pictures on large boards in an apparently slapdash manner, with the odd nonsense song thrown in, asking "Can you tell what is it yet?" as he painted. Only at the end of the song would a fully formed picture emerge, sometimes only after the board was turned through 90 or 180 degrees. Such appearances led to several television series based on his artistic ability, such as Rolf's Cartoon Time, broadcast on BBC One from 1979 to 1989, and Rolf's Cartoon Club, on CITV between 1989 and 1993. In the early 1980s, he starred in his own weekly Australian television series, The Rolf Harris Show, produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). The series featured numerous guests, including regulars such as Jane Scali. During the show Harris would also paint Australian bush scenes.

He was the subject of This Is Your Life in December 1971, when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews in New Bond Street in London, UK. In 1973, Harris performed the first concert in the Concert Hall of the newly completed Sydney Opera House. On his 1974 single "Papillon" (issued by EMI), a cover of a German song for which he wrote an English lyric, he played autoharp, in addition to singing. He played the didgeridoo on two albums by English pop singer Kate Bush, entitled 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 was again the subject of the UK version of This Is Your Life in September 1995, when Michael Aspel surprised him during a bagpipes parade in Edinburgh, Scotland. He also appeared on the Australian version of the television programme on two occasions.

Later career

In the late 1980s, Harris was touring in Australia and was asked to sing his own version of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" for the television programme The Money or the Gun performing with his own small group; a version was released as a single in the UK several years later. This cover version reached number seven in the charts, which led to his appearance at the Glastonbury Festival in 1993. Harris appeared at six subsequent Glastonbury festivals—1998, 2000, 2002, 2009, 2010 and 2013—and a wobble board Harris used to perform "Stairway to Heaven" on Top of the Pops is an exhibit at the National Museum of Australia. In 2000, Harris, along with Steve Lima, released a dance track called "Fine Day", which entered the "top 30" in the UK charts at that time. A "Killie-themed" version of the song was scheduled for release in March 2007, to coincide with the Scottish football club Kilmarnock's appearance in the Scottish League Cup final after the song was adopted by the club's fans in 2003. One of the adapted lyrics referred to a hypothetical situation, in which Kilmarnock could be losing the match 5–0, and the club coincidentally lost 5–1. Harris performed "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" in 2000 with the Australian children's group the Wiggles, he was subsequently digitally removed from DVD releases after his conviction.

From 1994 to 2003, Harris was the host of the reality television programme Animal Hospital, a chronicle of a British veterinary practice. During his time hosting the series, he adopted an abandoned English Bull Terrier from the practice named "Dolly". Harris presented 19 series of Animal Hospital for BBC One and the show won the Most Popular Factual Entertainment Show award at the National TV Awards on five occasions. Harris eventually announced that it was "time to move on" at the completion of the series, which broke "the hearts of thousands of fans across the country", according to the Radio Times.

In 2001 and 2004, Harris presented Rolf on Art, a television series that highlighted the work of a selection of his favourite artists, including van Gogh, Degas, Monet and Gauguin. In November and December 2002, under the direction of Charles Saumarez Smith, London's National Gallery exhibited a collection of Harris's art.

On 26 September 2004, Harris oversaw a project to recreate John Constable's The Hay Wain painting on a large scale, with 150 people contributing to a small section. On live BBC television, each individual canvas was assembled into the full picture as part of the episode Rolf on Art: The Big Event. Also in 2004, as a part of the Rolf on Art series, Harris travelled to Lapland to design and paint a Christmas card for the "Children in Need" charity organisation.

Harris presented three series of the BBC art programme Star Portraits with Rolf Harris, with the first and second series airing in 2004 and 2005, respectively. Following the first series, a touring exhibition—featuring portraits of Cilla Black, Michael Parkinson and Adrian Edmondson—was organised with County Hall Gallery. In 2001, Harris had said he always imagined he would eventually become a portrait painter as his grandfather, George Frederick Harris, had been.

Harris was commissioned to paint a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II for her 80th birthday. The painting was conducted at Buckingham Palace and was unveiled there by Harris on 19 December 2005. The painting also became the subject of a special episode of Rolf on Art. Harris explained to The Daily Telegraph the following year: "I was as nervous as anything. I was in a panic". The portrait was later voted as the second most-favoured portrait of the Queen by the British public.

In September 2006, the Royal Australian Mint launched the first of the new 2007 Silver Kangaroo Collector's Coin series and Harris was commissioned to design the first coin of the series. In January 2007, a one-hour documentary titled A Lifetime in Paint, about Harris's work as an artist—from his early years in Australia to the present day—was screened on BBC One.

Harris sketches a "Rolfaroo" self-portrait in 2008

In 2007 Harris participated in the BBC Wales programme Coming Home, in which he discussed his Welsh family history. In December 2007 a new DVD, titled Rolf Live!, was released through his website, while Rolf on Art: Beatrix Potter was screened on BBC One during the same month. Harris appeared with a wobble board in a Churchill Insurance advertisement in 2009, and hosted the satirical quiz show Have I Got News for You in May 2009. Harris was narrator of the 2010 Australian documentary series Penguin Island, a six-part natural history documentary about the life of the little penguin. From September 2010 to October 2010, he took part in Jamie's Dream School, teaching art to a class of 20 students, followed by an appearance as himself on the Christmas special of My Family, which aired on 24 December 2010.

Harris performed on the Pyramid Stage at the Glastonbury Festival on 25 June 2010, during the festival's 40th birthday, followed by an appearance at the Bestival Festival on the Isle of Wight in September 2010. On 5 August 2011, Harris played at Wickham Festival in Wickham, Hampshire, and also appeared on the Wiggles' 2011 DVD release Ukulele Baby, singing and performing the song "Good Ship Fabulous Flea" with his wobble board. In 2011 Harris made a guest appearance on BBC One's The Magicians, hosted by Lenny Henry. On 5 November 2011, Harris appeared in an episode of Piers Morgan's Life Stories, in which he wept as he spoke about a period in which he felt his "life was over": "I didn't know what to do with myself. I didn't know what to think. I now know what people mean when they say, 'I've got clinical depression.' I'd never felt so low. There's no way to come out of the blackness. I felt out of control". Harris also stated that he regrets missing so much of his daughter's childhood.

In December 2011, Harris's portrait of Bonnie Tyler was valued at an estimated £50,000 on BBC's The Antiques Roadshow. From 19 May to 12 August 2012, a major retrospective of Harris's paintings, titled "Rolf Harris: Can You Tell What It Is Yet?", was exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. The opening day yielded the busiest Saturday on record, with visitor figures peaking at 3,632.

On 2 May 2012, Harris appeared on The One Show, in which he described his artistic style as being "impressionistic". On 4 June 2012, he performed at the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Concert outside Buckingham Palace.

In October 2012, Harris started presenting a series on Channel 5, based at Liverpool University's Veterinary School, called Rolf's Animal Clinic. As of 8 August 2013, Channel 5 has recommissioned the show under a new title, Ben Fogle's Animal Clinic, and has replaced Harris with former BBC host Ben Fogle.

Musical recordings and experimentation

Harris playing the accordion in 2008

Harris has released 30 studio albums, two live albums and 48 singles. In 1960 his single "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" reached number 1 in Australia, and in 1969 "Two Little Boys" reached number 1 on both the Irish and UK charts. His 1992 Rolf Rules OK? album was nominated for the ARIA Music Award for Best Comedy Release.

Harris is credited with inventing a simple homemade instrument called the wobble board. As well as his beatboxing, similar to eefing, Harris went on to use an array of unusual instruments in his music, including the didgeridoo (the sound of which was imitated on "Sun Arise" by four double basses), the Jew's harp and, later, the stylophone (for which he also lent his name and likeness for advertising).

His version of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven", featuring didgeridoo and wobble board, reached the UK top ten in 1993. Harris also recorded a version of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" and performed the Divinyls' "I Touch Myself", accompanied only by his wobble board, for "Denton's Musical Challenge" on MMM radio's Breakfast Show (the recording was released on the first Musical Challenge compilation album in 2000). Harris also recorded an Australian Christmas song called "Six White Boomers", about a joey kangaroo trying to find his mother during the Christmas period. The song describes how Santa Claus used six large male kangaroos ("boomers"), instead of reindeer. In October 2008 Harris announced he would re-record his popular 1969 song "Two Little Boys", backed by North Wales' Froncysyllte Male Voice Choir, to mark the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I. Proceeds from the release were donated to the Poppy Appeal. Harris was inspired to make the recording after participating in My Family at War, a short series of programs that aired during the BBC's "Remembrance" season, broadcast in November 2008. He discovered that the experiences of his father and uncle during the Great War mirrored the lyrics of the song.

Declining health and death

In October 2022, it was reported that Harris was suffering with neck cancer, unable to talk and was being fed via a tube. He also required 24-hour care.

Harris died at his home in Bray, in Berkshire, England, on 10 May 2023, aged 93. His death was not publicly announced until 23 May, when it was confirmed to the media by register office officials in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. His death certificate gave the cause of death as neck cancer and "frailty of old age".

Honours

Harris received multiple awards and honours, but following his conviction many of these were rescinded. Harris was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1968; he was advanced to Officer (OBE) in 1977, then to Commander (CBE) in 2006, but these honours were revoked in March 2015.

In 1986, Harris planted a Cathormion umbellatum tree at Kununurra's celebrity tree park. The plaque recording the planting was stolen in July 2014, a week before the local council voted to keep it. The council, however, felt that ongoing vandalism at the park made it unlikely that the plaque would be replaced.

In 1989, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM), and was advanced to Officer (AO) in the Queen's 2012 Birthday Honours. These appointments were rescinded in February 2015.

In 2001, he was awarded the Centenary Medal "for service to entertainment, charity and the community". On 30 July 2014, the board of the National Trust of Australia (New South Wales) voted to remove Harris from the list of those honoured as "Australian National Living Treasures" and to withdraw the award. Harris had been among the original 100 Australians selected for the Medal in 1997.

Harris received two honorary doctorates: from the University of East London in 2007 and Liverpool Hope University in 2010. Both were rescinded following his conviction.

In 2008, Harris was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame. He was joined onstage by the Seekers to perform "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" and his "Jake the Peg" routine. After his conviction, the Australian Recording Industry Association removed him from the ARIA Hall of Fame.

The same year, to coincide with the release of Art: The Definitive Visual Guide, publishers Dorling Kindersley conducted the "What the British really think about art today" survey and placed Harris above notable English artist Damien Hirst.

In 2011, Harris was awarded the title of "Best Selling Published Artist" by the Fine Art Trade Guild. He was made a Fellow of BAFTA the following year, but following his conviction, the academy announced that his fellowship would be annulled. In July 2014, Froncysyllte Male Voice Choir announced that Harris's honorary vice-presidency had been annulled.

ARIA Music Awards

The ARIA Music Awards are a set of annual ceremonies presented by Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), which recognise excellence, innovation, and achievement across all genres of the music of Australia. They commenced in 1987.

Filmography

See also

In Spanish: Rolf Harris para niños