Rolf Harris Dead: Sex Offender and Former TV Star Was 93
Convicted sex offender and former television host Rolf Harris has died, PA reports. He was 93.
PA said his death, on May 10, had been confirmed by a registrar at Maidenhead Town Hall. The cause of death was listed as neck cancer and old age.
Harris, an artist and musician, was a well-known face on British television until 2012 when he was arrested and questioned about a series of sexual assaults he was said to have carried out between 1968 and 1986. In 2014 he was convicted and sentenced to almost six years in prison.
He served only three years, after being released in 2017.
Born in Perth, Western Australia in 1930, he moved to London as an art student in the early 1950s. He quickly found a job in television, showing children how to draw cartoons before moving onto other kids shows including “Jigsaw” and “Whirligig.”
His profile in the U.K. steadily grew and he began to get jobs including commentating the Eurovision Song Contest for the BBC and, perhaps his best known gig, “The Rolf Harris Show” which was broadcast on Saturday nights on the BBC. Later in his career he hosted shows including “Animal Hospital” and “Rolf on Art.”
He also launched a musical career, releasing a number of singles including “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport,” “Jake the Peg” and “Two Little Boys” which saw him play Glastonbury more than half a dozen times.
And in 2006 he was selected to paint a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II in honor of her 80th birthday.
But in 2014 he was convicted of 12 indecent assaults on four girls, two of whom were in their early teens and one was a friend of his daughter. One conviction, relating to an eight-year-old girl, was overturned on appeal but the others were sustained.
Following his conviction he was stripped of the many honors he had acquired over the course of his career, including an OBE and a BAFTA Fellowship.
Source: Variety
