Can you tell what it is yet?

Can I tell what it is yet? Well actually I can’t. I’ve been trying to avoid this Rolf Harris case, and when I say avoid I mean that I’ve been trying not to follow it. But the media is pervasive, it’s everywhere, and it is impossible not to pick up the odd report or two about what Rolf has said about the allegations that have been made against him.

I don’t know why I don’t want to know about this case, my reasons for my wanting to stay away from it all confuse even me. I suppose it could be that Rolf was almost a hero to me when I was a boy, no William Tell or Lone Ranger, but up there with Top Cat, Fred Flintstone, and Yogi. In many ways Rolf seemed a little like a cartoon character rather than a real live person with his painting, and singing, and Jake’s third leg – diddle, diddle, dum.

My Uncle Charlie thought he was great, and somehow I can’t think of Rolf without thinking of Charlie. Charlie could paint and was musical. He spent small fortunes, which he couldn’t afford, on stylophones, passing one of his old ones to me. I don’t remember him having a didgeridoo, but I do seem to remember a wobble board which he wobbled in accompaniment to his rendition of Sun Arise.

Digeridoo, wobble board, stylophone, cartooning – but this isn’t about Charlie. It’s about Rolf. Apparently Rolf has admitted to finding a thirteen year old girl in a swimsuit sexually attractive. He also agrees that he went on to have an affair with her when she was 18 and ‘legal’. He wrote letters to the girl’s father apologising about it. His daughter destroyed some of Rolf’s paintings when she found out her best friend had accused her father.

Rolf is either a very honest man with little to hide or a desperate man trying to slightly alter the truth to make it as plausible as one of his television show paintings.

Can you tell what it is yet?

I can’t.