National treasure to national disgrace

IN THE dock with his head bowed after being convicted of indecent assaults, Rolf Harris’s standing in the eyes of the public was perfectly summed up by the judge. 

- TOM BRYANT, ABIGAIL O'LEARY

Mr Justice Sweeney said: “Your reputation lies in ruins. You’ve been stripped of your honours and have no one to blame but yourself.”

It was some solace for the traumatised victims Harris had preyed on.

And, as he was led to his prison cell in 2014 to start his sentence of five years and nine months, his fall from grace was complete.

It was an extraordinary turnaround for the TV host and artist who had become showbiz royalty.

He had rubbed shoulders with actual royalty – meeting various members of the Royal Family including Charles and Camilla, and even painting a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II in 2005.

By that stage Harris’s artworks were selling for up to £100,000 and his fortune was worth an estimated £11million.

But his legacy has been in tatters since, when he was 84, a jury at

Southwark Crown Court in London found him guilty of a string of indecent assaults.

The honours he lost included his CBE, OBE and MBE, and the Member of the Order of Australia.

Harris was born in a suburb of Perth in

Australia in 1930. His parents, Cromwell and Agnes, had emigrated Down Under from Cardiff.

Rolf was a champion swimmer as a youngster and, aged 16, his self-portrait was hung in the Art Gallery of New South Wales. He attended Perth Modern School before doing a degree at the University of Western Australia and later getting a diploma of education.

He moved to the UK in 1952, when he was in his early 20s, to study at the City & Guilds of London Art School.