Site Map Official Rolf Harris site You can view or buy | Rolf on TV - Art BBC & Bligh of BountyI got rhythm - He's got a deft hand with a paintbrush, a gift for story-telling, a mean way with a didgeridoo and he can find a beat in just about anything. Dea Birkett trades tongue-twisters with the indestructible Rolf Harris who, at age 70, is now releasing his first dance single. Who could ask for anything more? There were thousands of us. The crowd was bigger than that for Suzanne Vega. It was bigger even than that for the doyen of world music, Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour, even though we were at Womad, the annual festival of world music. No, this was the man we all wanted to see. We recognise his face instantly. We trust the square glasses, the ruthlessly trimmed beard. We know the words to every single one of his songs. "You're a hero," cried out a white Rasta. The crowd began to shout his name. Can you tell who it is yet? "Rolf, Rolf, Rolf, Rolf... " Although we might now find Rolf fashionable, and we may cheer him at our festivals (he's played Womad, Glastonbury and Guildford this year), it's not Rolf that's changed. We have. He reminds us of when we were young, when children's TV had real-life stars and not cartoon characters as heroes. Rolf has not attempted to keep up with us. We have gone back to him. The song that received the biggest cheer at Womad was Two Little Boys, a sentimental ballad about the American Civil War that is hardly cutting edge, and that Rolf first sang in 1969. Margaret Thatcher chose it as one of her Desert Island Discs. Only after a good 20 minutes of talking - if we can give that word to the sounds that emerge from Rolf's agile lips - does he sit back a moment and say, "I don't know how you'd write that - wanna, wanna, wanna, wanna", helpfully suggesting a few alternative spellings. He resumes his wah-wahing for another five minutes, until it changes from "wanna wanna" to "wunna wanna". This, explains Rolf, is "wouldn't want to" said extremely fast. A few minutes of wunna wanna follow, during which he gets so excited that he knocks off his big bifocals, before beginning to speak our language again. "I was doing all these sounds, and I was going into a dinner with Peter Salmon, controller of BBC1. He laid on a meal for a few of the top BBC presenters. I was sitting next to one of the weather girls. Really good-looking blonde girl. I was talking to her about all the problems of her job, how they manage to refer to the screen when they only see it on a monitor... I was so impressed with it. We had a nice long conversation. Then, on the way home in the car, I put on Radio 1 again, trying to find another bit of rhythm, because I had this thing going in my head. That would work well, wouldn't it?" I wonder what he's referring to, but he begins to sing, "Another bit of rhythm, another bit, another bit... " extremely fast, until it becomes, "anna bi, anna bi, anna bi"... It's easy to imagine Harris's career being launched at an amateur competition; there is something about him that seems very unrehearsed. Whatever he's doing - whether playing his squeezebox or dashing off a Rolfaroo cartoon - it appears as if he is not professionally performing but simply doing his party piece. This is an illusion. On his first adult Saturday night TV series, The Rolf Harris Show, accompanied by the irreparably dated Young Generation dance troupe, he would draw huge landscapes on 12ft x 9ft backdrops. It looked effortless. But Harris would practise the paintings in full size as many as five times, against a stopwatch, so he could recreate them live in the allotted time each week. While his younger audience was being regenerated in clubs and at festivals, on the television he won the contract to present Animal Hospital, a job for which Ken Livingstone was first considered. It was not an instant success. "The truth of the matter was that Rolf was a huge risk," says Lorraine Heggessey, who was executive producer on the original series. The first two programmes went only reasonably well. But on the third day, a tough-looking guy dressed in denim came in with a very sick German Shepherd called Floss. Floss had to be put down, and her owner became very distressed. Rolf offered comfort, putting his arm around him, and was soon in tears himself. "That night, people saw the German Shepherd being put down and Rolf crying live on national television," said Heggessey. "The next day it was the talking point of the nation. The next night our rating shot up to nearly 10 million." Was this a case of false sentimentality? Was this a ruthless TV personality, desperate to secure his foothold in popular broadcasting after his Cartoon Club had been axed, making a calculated display of emotion to boost the audience? I suspect not. With Harris, what you see is what you get. There is no artifice. The presenter of Animal Hospital and Rolf's Amazing World Of Animals went on this year's annual holiday with his one wife, one daughter and one four-year-old grandson to a Kenyan elephant orphanage. Dougie Squires, who choreographed The Rolf Harris Show, said, "I wish I could dish the dirt about this man, but there is none." The only thing that appears to be artificial is his teeth. Harris currently has two programmes on telly. In Animal Hospital, he hangs out with vets who help choking rabbits or rescue kitties trapped down toilets. Rolf on Art, his latest series, has been headline news. With 6.8m viewers, it has gained the highest TV ratings for a UK arts programme. The sceptics have bawled that Rolf attempting to paint in the style of Van Gogh or Degas just shows how TV has dumbed down. But most of us love it - it's a celebration of the impressionists, a celebration of the amateur copyist, a celebration of art. View or buy his Artwork |
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