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7 hours ago
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I mean this quite seriously; it is time to start commissioning programmes about good men. We need a steady, regular inoculation against despair. If deep dives into the lives of male celebrities past and present can yield enough unblemished records for a series, I’ll be surprised but delighted. If not, maybe we can ask the public to nominate “ordinary” men, like a version of the Pride of Britain awards. Channel 4, call me.
Such are the thoughts that wend their way across the mind as the two-hour-long episodes of Rolf Harris: Primetime Predator unfold. For those of you who remain unaware – Harris was one of the kings of light entertainment in the 1970s and 80s, an avuncular Australian presence who brought us daft hit songs like Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport and Jake the Peg with his extra leg (while wearing a false leg, to make sure only adults were let in on the double entendre), and then parlayed his talents as an artist and presenter into a long and lucrative TV career. He became re-beloved by a new generation in the 90s, playing Glastonbury in 1993 after his wobble-board version of Stairway to Heaven became a hit.
In 2013 he was arrested as part of Operation Yewtree, the investigation launched into sexual abuse in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal. Officers had received evidence that Harris, too, had been abusing young women and girls for decades. His earliest known victim (“A”) was the then 13-year-old friend of his daughter Bindi. He pleaded not guilty to the multiple charges brought against him, though he still recalled for jurors having “A” masturbate him under the blanket he, Bindi and the child had over their laps while watching TV on the sofa together. At the end of an eight-week trial they convicted him on all 12 counts of indecent assault against four female victims aged between eight and 19, between the 1960s and the 1980s. He was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison and was released on licence after three. He died in 2023 at the age of 93.
The documentary is the usual – oh, that we have a usual for this – mix of potted career history, a demonstration of how the perpetrator amassed power (women at the BBC were warned not to put themselves in vulnerable positions because of his “octopus” tendencies), and a compilation of the protections that allowed him to hide in plain sight (like Savile, Harris was liked by the royal family, and painted the queen’s 80th birthday portrait in 2005). Then there is the mind-boggling archive footage: Harris appearing on Jim’ll Fix It and assuring Savile he could leave a child on stage “safely in my capable hands,” and, when she moved the wrong way, adding, “Stay here and enjoy it, girl.” He also fronted the public child safety campaign Kids Can Say No! in Australia in 1985. Then there are contributions from the officers who eventually put together the case against him – and, of course, contributions from victims. Some of them spoke at his trial, while some do so publicly for the first time here.
Again, as is so desperately familiar, there are memories of not being believed by parents, of indifferent police if the assaults were reported, and the consequent loss of chances to stop a predator before he could move on to many, many more victims. And there are allusive lines that chill you even more. “I just wish I’d been taught to push people away,” says Chris, remembering her 11-year-old self with Harris in Darwin. “I just wish my mum was here,” says Tonya Lee, 15 at the time Harris assaulted her nearly 30 years ago, speaking in the present tense as time collapses.
They are all, however, unusually clear about the ramifications – over decades, now – of what they experienced with Harris. Lee perhaps speaks not just for Harris’s victims but for everyone who has ever found themselves in the hands of a predator like him. “For one moment of whatever pleasure, whatever high [he] got from it,” she says, with enraged acuity, “he destroys lives … Nothing is the same.”
Maybe one day things will be different. Until then, I’ll take that alternative documentary series – if you can find enough subjects who pass the test.
