Rolf Harris

  • Australian
  • Actor, comedian, television personality and artist

Press clippings

7 clips that prove Chris Morris's also a musical genius

Looking back at Morris's body of work, 20 years after the first episode of Brass Eye was broadcast on January 29, 1997, it's clear that few people have combined music and comedy quite as successfully. Whether he's creating strung-out ambient music for a short film about a talking dog or parodying Eminem to highlight the media hysteria surrounding paedophilia, Morris's use of music strikes the balance between creating black comedy and something that's actually listenable. Below are seven of his finest music moments - just be careful not to find yourself jazzing to the bleep tone of a life support machine.

Scott Wilson, Fact Mag, 29th January 2017

Why Goodnight Sweetheart is the most subversive sitcom

There aren't many sitcoms about a grown man pretending to be a spy who wrote The Beatles' back catalogue. Who also befriends Noel Coward, saves Clement Attlee's life, and meets George VI, the Kray twins and Winston Churchill. Then again, time-travelling oddity Goodnight Sweetheart was no ordinary sitcom.

Michael Hogan, The Telegraph, 8th July 2016

Robbie Coltrane plays fallen comic in Yewtree drama

Robbie Coltrane is to star as a fallen comedian in an incendiary TV drama inspired by the historic sex cases involving Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris.

Baz Bamigobye, Daily Mail, 22nd January 2016

Frank Skinner's Name That Tune suffers setbacks

Frank Skinner's return to ITV has suffered a setback following a series of problems and bad jokes including one about Rolf Harris, it has been reported.

Danny Walker, The Mirror, 6th May 2015

Phoenix Nights Live review: not for the easily offended

From an invasion of angry dwarves to a musical mashup of Gary Glitter and Rolf Harris, Peter Kay and co are as off-colour as ever.

Alfred Hickling, The Guardian, 5th February 2015

John Lloyd's "blood runs cold" over Rolf Harris sketch

The writer and TV producer John Lloyd has said it "makes his blood run cold" to look back on a comedy sketch from 1980 that shows young children being abducted and put in a BBC van bound for a children's TV show hosted by Rolf Harris.

Adam Withnail, The Independent, 7th July 2014

ITV sorry for Benidorm's Rolf Harris references

ITV has apologised after an episode of Benidorm referencing Rolf Harris was repeated a day after the star was convicted of indecent assault.

BBC News, 2nd July 2014

When something is rumoured as possibly the worst British film ever, there's a car crash-type need to see it. And when you spy Cliff Richard and Rolf Harris cameoing as buskers during the opening credits you know you're in for a humdinger. This remake of Ray Cooney's 'whoops, where's me trousers?' farce casts Danny Dyer - who else? - as a black cabbie whose bigamist lifestyle is threatened with exposure after a dog food-eating tramp (Judi Dench - what was she thinking?) clocks him one with a handbag. Neil Morrissey sits on a chocolate cake, Richard Briers falls into a hedge, Christopher Biggins pushes Lionel Blair bum-first through a bathroom floor - no one emerges unscathed among the cameo-packed cast that reads largely like a roll-call for Brit TV legends you'd previously suspected deceased.

Angie Errigo and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, Metro, 15th February 2013

The horror-comedy genre is notoriously hard to pull off, but this Anglo-Irish effort makes a decent, trashy fist of it. Ross Noble plays a dead clown, impaled on a kitchen knife at a young lad's birthday, who returns to exact punishment on the kids who tripped him up. Variations are spun on his old party tricks: someone's large intestine is turned into a balloon animal, and it's hard not to guffaw at Noble's Rolf Harris quip ("Can you tell what it is yet?"). He's no Freddy Krueger - the story lacks genuine fright - but the practical effects are amusingly grisly.

Tim Robey, The Telegraph, 25th October 2012

This is a Ricky Gervais programme for people who don't like Ricky Gervais. Derek Noakes (played by Gervais) is a retirement home worker with learning disabilities. He sports greasy hair and bad cardigans, but he always puts others first and is kind to the old people he looks after. He also loves Rolf Harris and Deal or No Deal.

So far so predictable: Gervais has seemingly picked another vulnerable target to poke fun at, while no doubt purporting to break down taboos. But remarkably this is not the case. Gervais is not making fun of Derek, or anyone, it seems - he's celebrating him, and the other outsiders who work in the home (including Karl Pilkington in his debut acting role as Dougie the caretaker, and Kerry Godliman who plays Derek's best friend Hannah). It's a genuinely fond and amusing script. When one of the old people at the home dies, Derek remembers the lady once telling him: "It's more important to be kind than clever or good-looking." "I'm not clever or good-looking... but I am kind," Derek says, holding back the tears. Gervais is apparently hoping this pilot episode will be commissioned for a full series but Channel 4 has billed it as a one-off comedy drama. They'd be fools to let it go.

Josephine Moulds, The Telegraph, 11th April 2012

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