Rolf Harris

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".

Rolf Harris (30 March 1930 – 10 May 2023) was an Australian musician, television personality, painter, and actor.

He often used unusual instruments like the didgeridoo and the Stylophone in his performances, and is credited with the invention of the wobble board.

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 within Australia as "the boy from Bassendean".

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).

In 1946, he was the Australian Junior 110 yd Backstroke Champion.

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 was also the Western Australian state champion over a variety of distances and strokes during the period from 1948 to 1952.

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.

Harris moved to England in 1952 and became an art student at City and Guilds of London Art School in South London, aged 22.

Harris began his entertainment career in 1953, releasing several songs, including "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" (a Top 10 hit in Australia, the UK and the United States), "Sun Arise", "Jake the Peg" and "Two Little Boys", which reached number 1 in the UK.

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.

In 1954, Harris was a regular on 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.

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.

He went on to illustrate Paper Magic, Harbin's first book on origami, in 1956.

Harris returned to Perth in Australia when television was introduced there in 1959 after he was headhunted.

From the 1960s, Harris was 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!, which warned children between ages five and eight how to avoid situations where they might be sexually abused, how to escape such situations and how to get help if they are abused.

In 2005, he painted an official portrait of Queen Elizabeth II.

After the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal, Harris was arrested as part of the Operation Yewtree police investigation regarding historical allegations of sexual offences in 2013.

He was convicted in England in 2014 of the sexual assault of four underage girls, which effectively ended his career.

Harris denied any wrongdoing and was placed on trial in 2014.

In July 2014, Harris was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison after being convicted on twelve counts of indecent assault on four female victims, who were between the ages of eight and nineteen at the time that the offences took place between the 1960s and 1980s.

He was released on licence in 2017 after serving nearly three years at HM Prison Stafford.

Following his conviction, he was stripped of many of his honours and reruns of his television programmes were pulled from syndication.

The conviction involving an eight-year-old girl in Portsmouth was overturned as unsafe in 2017.

He applied for permission to appeal against his convictions concerning the three other girls, but this was refused.