As readers of this blog will know, I went up to Lincoln to present a travel writing workshop on the weekend. It was part of the Lincoln Book Festival and it went really well. I had a great bunch of students with a load of interesting stories and brilliant ideas. I’m really looking forward to seeing their work in print one day.
My wife Sally is originally from Lincoln and her parents still live there. So the trip gave us the chance to drop in and visit the relos as well. Sally disappeared into her old bedroom and found this, her favourite Rolf Harris album of all time. She told me that it cost her 99 pence and that she used to play it at least three times a day.
It’s the kind of revelation that can rock a marriage, but luckily Sally had confessed to her love of Rolf shortly before we got hitched. I can’t say it was something I was comfortable with, but hey, we’ve all got skeletons in our closet. Indeed, when we went around Australia on the trip that will become Crikey we got to see Rolf perform live as part of an Australia Day extravaganza in Perth.
We even hung around after the show. Sally wanted to speak to Rolf. She’d invited him to her fifth birthday party and he hadn’t shown up. When she confronted Rolf about it in Perth he gave her a quick who-ha-who and smile and said that he’d come to her next party.
She giggled like a school girl.
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Good grief….I still have a 33 of ‘Two Little Boys’ tucked away in the vault
Actually, make that a 45…..showing my relative youth there !
Ah…Rolf…I met him a few years ago at Jongleurs in Camden Town where he was doing a ‘concert’ (no, I am not ashamed!) and I took the opportunity to say hello afterwards (in my rather drunken state). I shook his hand vigerously and told him that I had ‘grown up with him’. He looked at me rather strangly, nodded his head and moved away…
I defy anyone to listen to ‘Two Little Boys’ without crying!!
I too grew up with Rolf Harris – loved the public information film about the dangers of not knowing how to swim, coveted a stylophone ….
Yep, I’m with you with that one Wendy – Two Little Boys is a wonderful song!
I grew up watching him on Rolfs Cartoon Time (with those horrid horrid squeeky pens…).
I’m going to “come out” as a bit of a fan. I saw him at Glastonbury in (I think) 2000, just to see what he would be like, and it was amazing. He had quite a gift of engaging the audience and of doing great music without taking himself too seriously.
The memory of over a thousand people packed into and gathered around a small tent, all singing along to his cover of Robbie Williams’ “Angels” (complete with wobbleboard!) will stay with me for some time!
I still have a stylophone in the attic along with the flexi-disk that came with it! Rolf, I want my money back!!
He grew from a great lad into a great person. His portrait of the Queen done at the beginning of the year is a masterpiece, and seeing him painting it on BBC, live so to speak, showed just what a nice, genuine person he is!
Keep at it Rolf!
As long as your wife don’t look like Rolf ya can sleep easy in bed mate……otherwise…….!!!!!!!!