Littlejohn – Rolf Harris Wrong Call

The Daily Mail’s tedious and unfunny churnalist Richard Littlejohn has a problem today: he has to say something about former entertainer Rolf Harris, who has just been found guilty of a number of sex offences, but cannot tell readers of his crashing ineptitude on the subject, where he twice suggested the Police were wasting their time and should go after real criminals instead.

Rolf Harris, Guv? Er, not now ... schtum ... schtum!

Last year, he was in no doubt: ““I wonder if those Met officers swanning round Australia interviewing women who claim to have been touched up by Rolf Harris four decades ago could have been better deployed on anti-terrorist surveillance duties in South London”. Yeah, what a waste of money, eh?

Not long after that, he doubled down: ““Harris was re-arrested this month. Officers have even travelled to Australia trawling for victims after one 43-year-old woman claimed to have been assaulted by Harris when she was a teenager. Nice work if you can get it, Sarge”. Now he has a chance to explain himself.

But explaining himself is exactly what Dicky Windbag is not about to do: instead, he nonchalantly executes a two-pronged “look over there” manoeuvre in order to bodyswerve the issue altogether. First of his two distractions is to home in on the account of presenter Vanessa Feltz, who has confirmed that Harris groped her during an edition of The Big Breakfast.

Would you Adam and Eve it, says Littlejohn, he once appeared on live TV with Rolf Harris, and then sometime later appeared with Vanessa! I mean, what a coincidence! Er, yeah, what an irrelevance, you mean. It still doesn’t explain how The Sage Of Vero Beach called the Harris investigation so spectacularly wrong.

So Dicky Windbag launches a second front in his campaign to distract attention – attacking the Labour Party, and especially Margaret Hodge, because, well, Dick likes kicking women. “This is the same woman who presided over, and failed properly to investigate, sexual abuse in children’s homes when she was leader of Islington Council” he asserts. “Presided over sexual abuse”? Smears’R’Us strikes again.

Then he chucks in a Jimmy Savile reference: “Evidence has since emerged suggesting that Jimmy Savile assaulted children in Islington’s care”. It has? Here’s the wording from the Telegraph: “Police have uncovered possible evidence that Jimmy Savile sexually assaulted vulnerable children in a care home in Islington”. So a possibility, and no more. But attention successfully diverted elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Littlejohn continues to trouser the thick end of a million notes a year by churning out his lame copy, backed up by horrendously wrong calls as with his repeated suggestion that pursuing Rolf Harris was a waste of time. Nice work if you can get it, eh Dicky Boy? Pass the sick bag.