When I was at Art College in the early nineties, I suggested that it may be a good idea to ask Rolf Harris to present us with our degrees at our graduation ceremony. This was before his career took off again, before Rolf's Animal Slaughterhouse and all that other stuff, and before he acquired a certain hipness doing cover versions of Lou Reed and Led Zeppelin songs. He was considered to be a bit naff at the time, a children's entertainer who painted on walls and sung novelty songs, but we thought he'd be an unusual choice for the ceremony, and we'd be able to look back with a sense of amusement over the whole thing.
Unfortunately, he was busy, and Neil Innes ended up presenting us with our degrees, which was very nice.
Now Rolf's been unmasked as a serial sexual assaulter, with scores of women coming forward claiming that he'd molested them at various times over the last forty years, and some of them were really young at the time, which given his showbiz persona, is absolutely sickening. When it was disclosed that he was being investigated, nobody could quite believe it; it wasn't as though he had a reputation as dodgy as Jimmy Savile's, or as weird as Stuart Hall's, but as more details came out about what he got up to, it just left everybody feeling sullied, and sad and angry that their childhood has in some way been blighted.
Now it looks like he going to prison. I'm not really sure what the point of a custodial sentence would be to somebody in their eighties, other than a chance for society to extract some revenge for being duped by him for so many years. He's a ruined man, his life and reputation's in tatters, and in his final years, his past has caught up with him.
It would surely make more sense to look at what financial assets he has left, and look at punishing him through his wallet, rather than sending him to jail.
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