Telling what it is...

So Rolf, as I feared, is guilty as charged on all counts. Unfortunately, there’s no shadow of doubt and I’m sure that there will be plenty more skeletons to tumble out of this particular closet. I think that generally the nation is shocked that this loveable icon turns out not to be so loveable after all. For my part I can hardly bear to write ‘Rolf’ without putting ‘Harris’ after his forename; as if this small formality will undo the ache of lost faith in a childhood role model.

Rolf Harris seemed, in many ways, so normal; so unlike that other child molesting monster Jimmy Savile. Harris wasn’t a strange, aggressive loner, he was a family man. Away from the celebrity spotlight, he’s been married to Alwen, who he met at art school, since 1958 and both she and his daughter Bindi seem to have been at his side throughout the case. I wonder what they are thinking and feeling now? What will their next moves be? Whatever they decide, he’s ruined their lives as well as his own and who knows how many others? New accusations pour in from the UK, Australia, and New Zealand almost hourly.

Of course, we all have many sides to our natures, multiple personalities, some of which we carefully hide. But most of us don’t get the opportunity to build the person that we’d like to be, rather than the one that we are, in front of an audience of millions. Most of us can’t fool all of the people all of the time and we are pretty well known to those around us, or at least as well known as we allow ourselves to be. Even this is changing though, in this social media driven world it’s easy for each of us to invent ourselves in our own chosen image.

Many of us are fooling ourselves, and everyone else, most of the time. Super celebrities like Harris, with publicists and stylists to help them along; seem to manage it all of the time… almost.

Perhaps that is part of the problem.

They say that you should never believe your own publicity; I think that Harris did. I think that he genuinely believed he was one of the good guys and forgave himself for all the wrong things he’s done. His performance in court, and the insolent honesty with which he answered some of the questions, was that of a man secure in the belief that ultimately his good image would triumph over his awful reality in the eyes of the jury.

Fortunately not even a rendition of Jake the Peg was enough to pull the wool over the juror’s eyes and ultimately they did see past the performance to the thing that lurked beneath.

Can I tell what it is yet?

Yes I can, and it’s not a pretty picture.