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His lust for fame drove his wife to the brink of suicide. So why is Rolf Harris STILL chasing the limelight?

By TANYA GOLD
Last updated at 11:05am on 3rd January 2008

Rolf Harris is barking. Literally. At me. 'Woof, woof!' Has Britain's bestloved children's entertainer spent too much time in the Animal Hospital?
Can he be brought back? Yes.


"I'd do anything for attention when I was a child," he says. "I barked at people. I was very annoying. Woof."

He has had the most fascinating career in British TV. From his debut with Fuzz the puppet in 1952 to sobbing over dying cats during the 19th series of Animal Hospital, Rolf's had more reincarnations than Madonna.

Of course, he does have his detractors; the critic A. A. Gill, for example, who wrote: "Rolf Harris is a hard man to hate, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try."

So what's at the heart of the Wizard of Aus? He ambles in and kisses my hand. "I wore a smart suit to try to impress you," he says, gravely. He is 77, though he looks ageless. He is tall and more handsome in the flesh than on TV.

Rolf grew up in Australia in the Thirties, the son of working-class Welsh migrants. "I was not a typical Australian,' he says. 'Everything I liked - painting, singing - was different."

The seeds of Rolf the entertainer were there, waiting to flower into wobbleboards and wizardry. "I played Waltzing Matilda on my accordion to anyone who would listen,' he says. 'I would do anything for praise."

By 1952, after a brief spell working in an asbestos mine, he fled to Britain. He survived the long sea voyage by busking and had an experience in Paris he has never shared on CBBC: some fellow travellers dragged him into a brothel.

"The woman said: 'Would you like to stay and make some love with the young ladies?'" he says. "I just wanted to get out of there."

Arriving in London, the young Rolf smashed into the class system. "When I landed in Britain, I realised the world was divided by class and I came from the bottom one," he says. "The English accent made me feel as though I was a peasant tugging at the forelock."

In Australia, Rolf had been an artistic prodigy and champion swimmer, but in England he was no one.

Art is his passion; when he speaks about it, he looks intensely serious and his voice drops to a whisper. "I am an artist above all," he says.

Rolf met his wife, Alwen, a Welsh-born sculptress and jeweller, at the Royal Academy of Arts, where they were both exhibiting paintings. They married in 1958, with a dog as a bridesmaid.

He says he saw a kindred spirit in Alwen's shyness, because underneath his performance persona, Rolf insists he is quiet, too.

"I'm shy and I make a lot of noise to cover it up," he says. "I come through the door and think: 'What am I going to say? What am I going to do?' And the noise covers it up."

And it's at this point that the dark heart of Rolf pops out. He tells me his workaholism and desire for praise almost destroyed his family.

Rolf was offered his own show in Australia, and after dragging his new wife over there, he basically abandoned her.

Rolf hit the big time in 1959 with Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport, but as he thrived, his wife wilted. Stuck in strange country, she contemplated suicide, and her husband didn't even know how she felt.

It wasn't until 30 years later that Rolf found her diary in a pile of rubbish.

"I feel like killing myself, I am so bored," she had written. "My days are filled with such emptiness. Please take me away from here."

Rolf says she never said a word, but as he tells this story, he looks devastated. "I was so absorbed in my own career and trying to impress people that I had forgotten about Alwen. I had assumed that what made me happy made her happy."

The ticking bomb in his marriage didn't go off, he says, until the Eighties.
As he was walking down the street with his daughter, Bindi - now 43 and also an artist - he did what comes naturally. He signed an autograph.

Bindi turned to him and said: "Do you know that you pay more attention to any child who stops you in the street than you do to me? You give them more time and your attention. Why didn't I ever have that?"

Again, he looks devastated. "It was a huge shock, because you realise the truth of it," he says.

"So you have to try to redress that. We never talked about anything important in my family. It seemed so hard."

But when his wife and daughter confronted him, what did he do? "I made a contract with them," he says. "I promised that I would put a bubble around myself - not of invisibility, but of self-containment.

"Today, when I am out with my family, I don't meet people's eyes, because then they won't stop you to talk."

He finds it hard. But Alwen couldn't leave him. "We never thought of separating," he says, looking shocked. "Never."

He said sorry, and the family worked it out - though his constant working, he says, "drives my wife mad".

The couple returned to London and Rolf climbed the TV ladder, watching the Sixties unfold. "I didn't understand the Rolling Stones at all," he says, looking surprised. "I just didn't get it."

But in a strange twist, Rolf's song of friendship, Two Little Boys, was the last No.1 of the decade. It sits on top of the musical revolution like Mary Whitehouse.

He was becoming famous - and notorious. By 1975, the comedy troupe The Goodies attempted to catch "a wild Rolf Harris".

They put him in a zoo, but he escaped, mated and caused "a Rolf Harris plague" in Britain. The real Rolf's reaction to this is sanguine. "I would have loved to play myself," he sighs.

I can see an Alan Partridge quality to Rolf; a naivete that is lovable, despite his preference for puppets and animals over people. He says he once played a venue in Epsom, Surrey, and was shocked to see children smoking and drinking alcohol. They were, in fact, jockeys from the local racecourse.

After he saw Woody Allen in New York in the Sixties, he told his agent the comedian 'had no future'. Like Alan Partridge, he takes himself very seriously, though he thinks he doesn't.

John Lennon once grabbed a microphone during Rolf's act and told jokes. Rolf lost his rag, telling the Beatle: "**** up your own act if you want to, but don't **** up mine." I wonder if, deep down, he thinks he is a fraud. When the Rolf Harris Show was cancelled at the end of the Sixties, he says he expected it.

"For years, I'd been waiting for someone to say: 'You aren't up to this:
we've found you out,'" he says.

Today, he is the People's Polymath, has been dusted with honours - CBE, MBE, OBE - and painted the Queen in 2005.

Rolf's rise to glory has annoyed some people. Melvyn Bragg - a much easier man to hate - accused the BBC of "a dereliction of duty" by employing him.
How did Rolf feel about this? Does he want to hit them with his wobbleboard?


He just shrugs and gives me his Wizard of Aus smile as he ambles off into the cold. Perhaps it's the wind, but do I hear a tiny "woof"?