Lauren Laverne 

Lauren Laverne: How Rolf Harris bit me and got away with it

It was partly the media that let the vileness of Rolf Harris and Jimmy Savile go unremarked, but now Twitter can help us keep watch, says Lauren Laverne
  
  

Rolf Harris arriving at Southwark crown court during his trial this year.
Rolf Harris arriving at Southwark crown court during his trial this year. Photograph: Paul Davey/Demotix/Corbis Photograph: / Paul Davey/Demotix/Corbis

I remember two things about meeting Rolf Harris: him biting me, and it not being a big deal. That sounds weird. Showbiz was, then.

Eleven years isn’t all that long ago, but it’s a lifetime in pop culture. I was 25, happily working in “yoof” TV. I’d arrived a bit late for its golden age (my adventures in the medium took place somewhere between sunset and the gloaming of that particular period), but it was enjoyable enough. Major channels still made music shows for young people to watch. Twitter didn’t exist, so you had no idea everyone hated you. Irony was still fashionable, so Rolf, Savile and the rest of the Operation Yewtree Allstars (some artists still TBC on that particular bill, of course) could earn double bubble, working the housewife-friendly matinée shift on daytime TV before hopping in a cab over to shows like ours, where you’d find them nestling on an MDF sofa between, say, Marilyn Manson and Babyshambles. As it turns out, the God of Fuck and post-Britpop’s most famous crack smoker had very little on some of our booked-for-lolz, avuncular old geezers in terms of genuine evil. How’s that for irony?

Like everyone else, I have followed the Harris case and Savile inquiry with horror. I have also followed with professional interest. Like others working in the media at that time, I have been asked questions by friends outside the industry. Did we know that they were monsters? Wasn’t it obvious? How could it not be obvious? In recent weeks, during which I kept waiting for the phrase “THE TRIAL OF ROLF HARRIS” to stop sounding completely surreal (it didn’t), I have pondered them a lot. I have thought back to my brief encounters with Savile (spoiler: not a nice man) and Rolf.

I was interviewing the latter on TV, and when I shook his hand instead of shaking back he pulled me towards him and grizzled into the side of my neck. As I recall I shoved him off, made light of it and proceeded with the interview. I remember it as icky, nibbly. Very beardy. But mostly I remember it as unremarkable. And that’s a problem – the problem when it comes to the media at that time. It’s not just that he bit me – it’s that neither I nor anyone else around me thought much of it when he did.

It is possible for an evil to be – in the words of George Orwell – “something too normal to be noticed”. The phrase “hiding in plain sight” has been applied to Harris and Savile. It’s an apt one, especially as it involves an inability to see what is plainly there as much as it does cunning.

There was heinous, sexist bullshit everywhere in those days. I’m not even sure Rolf Harris biting me was my worst experience that week. It certainly isn’t the worst ever (that would be the musician who trapped me in my dressing room screaming: “You fucking bitch, you fat fucking bitch. How do you like this?” because I’d made a good-natured joke on another show about an outfit he wore to a festival). I didn’t complain about that either. It seemed like a one-off.

Now I’m not sure it was. I think about my friends’ stories from those days. Make-up girls, runners, researchers, other presenters… Everyone’s experiences are the same, or worse. Like confetti – tiny fragments of apparently isolated, random awfulness that turn out not to be isolated or random, actually… everywhere.

Would anybody notice now? If a 72-year-old man bit a 25-year-old girl on camera? I think they would. The world is watching. People on Twitter can tell you straightaway if they hate you. The great thing is, sometimes they get it right.

Comments on this article will be pre-moderated and must be approved by a moderator before appearing on the site

 

Leave a Comment

Required fields are marked *

*

*