Rolf Harris made an odd choice for a final encore, considering.
“This was the first verse that he wrote,” the iconic Australian entertainer said by way of introduction to Lead Belly’s Goodnight Irene. “But they never used this verse.”
“I asked your mother for you / She told me you was too young. / Now I wish I’d never seen your face / I wish you had never been born.”
After a moment’s pause for reflection, the audience in Bristol, in the UK, sang along anyway.
Harris was making his first public appearance since he was named as a suspect in a police investigation involving sexual offences.
He received several standing ovations from the loyal near-capacity crowd at the Bristol Hippodrome, which seats just under 2000.
Harris performed all his best-known hits, including Two Little Boys, Sun Arise, Tie Me Kangaroo Down and the wobble-board version of Stairway to Heaven.
He interspersed the songs with a quick painting of Uluru and several cheesy old gags – but also often thanked the audience for their vocal appreciation.
“You have got no idea what this means to have you turn up with such enthusiasm and such support,” he said at the start of the second half of the 180-minute concert.
At one point he read from a letter he said he had received from a fan.
“Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it is about learning to dance in the rain,” Harris read from the letter from “Helen and Matthew”.
“Isn’t that nice. Thanks for that. Thankyou for that little vote of confidence.”
Harris also said he was disappointed not to have been booked again for the Glastonbury festival, where he was an unexpected hit in 2010.
“I wish they had booked me into doing this year, I really loved doing that show, it was magic,” he said.
The success of his Stairway to Heaven cover had been “a lovely boost for my self-esteem,” he said.
Harris was interviewed under caution in November last year on suspicious of sexual offences. He was arrested again in March, two days before his 83rd birthday, and again released without charges.
At the time police said he was bailed “to a date in May pending further inquiries”.
In the past few weeks it has emerged police interviewed two women in Australia in connection with sex abuse claims.
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One said she was a witness to an incident, another claimed Harris sexually assaulted her when she was a teenager in the UK.
After a shaky start Harris seemed to enjoy himself on stage in Bristol, though several times he asked the audience not to film him or take pictures – once even inserting the request into a song.
He revealed that a song he has written about flightless birds determined to take wing has been recorded as a single, and will be released as a Christmas song in New Zealand, Australia and the UK.
This was only Harris’ second concert of the year, and according to his website he has no other public appearances booked.
In early February – after he had been first interviewed by police, but before his arrest and the allegations being published in the mainstream media – he performed at the Royal Festival Hall in London.
Last night’s concert followed almost exactly the same setlist as that show, even down to the jokes.
Harris tried to dodge waiting papparazi when he arrived at the Hippodrome, by entering through a side door rather than the stage door used by most artists.
A small group of fans were disappointed by the ploy, after waiting outside the venue for hours to ask him to autograph their photographs of the singer.
One fan said it had been a different story when Harris had previously performed in Bristol at a Christmas pantomine.
“It was a great night, we went to a party with him after the show,” she said.
Her husband, who said he had been a Harris fan “forever”, said he was upset by the allegations about prominent entertainers that had surfaced after the exposure of Jimmy Savile.
“You don’t know when it’s going to end, do you” he said.
At the end of the night Harris quickly left in his car under the glare of camera flashes, not waiting to sign autographs.
Instead fans were handed photocopied slips of paper with a cartoon drawing and an address to send autograph requests.
