Investigators working on the arrest of famed Australian comedian Rolf Harris have recounted how he suddenly burst into song during interrogation.
Harris, a singer, comedian, and television personality, was previously regarded as a “national treasure,” but when the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal emerged in late 2012, he was detained as part of the Operation Yewtree police probe.
He was convicted of sexually assaulting four young females two years later, and in July 2014, at the age of 84, Harris was sentenced to five years and nine months in jail on twelve charges of indecent assault on four female victims throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
He was granted parole in 2017 after spending nearly three years, and a new documentary, Rolf Harris: Hiding in Plain Sight, is expected to shed light on his rise and fall.
During the inquiry, Harris was interrogated twice, and during the first, a weird incident occurred that astonished the Operation Yewtree officers interviewing him.
Former Detective Sergeant Gary Pankhurst begins: ‘The very first interview that we did with Rolf Harris, he wasn’t under arrest, it was a voluntary interview under caution.
‘He was generally a fairly monosyllabic and quiet individual.’
Pankhurst then adds: ‘When we just finished an interview, we’re sitting there, and then he just breaks into singing Sun Arise.’
A now-undercover Detective with the Metropolitan Police, whose identity has been withheld in the video, recalls Harris ‘humming to himself’ as well.
‘The whole song all the way through to Gary and myself. It was massively surreal.
‘I remember Gary and I looking at ourselves kind of like, “What do we do now?”‘
Pankhurst goes on to explain: ‘That could have been nerves, or it could have been anxiety, or maybe that’s his way of relaxing.
‘But as soon as I started talking to him about the record and about him as a performer, he just changed.
‘He became animated and interested. There was always a falseness about him.
‘There was nothing about him that was natural or honest.’
Rolf Harris: Hiding in Plain Sight is now streaming on ITVX.
