Rolf Harris

“For sheer creativity and totality of involvement, 'Rolf's Cartoon Club' with HTV in Bristol was an amazing show to work on, but I think the 'Rolf on Art' series, culminating in the painting of the Queen's portrait to celebrate her 80th birthday, just nudges into the favourite spot.”

“I've always tried to retain that childlike wonder.”

“I will never shave off my beard and moustache. I did once, for charity, but my wife said, 'Good grief, how awful, you look like an American car with all the chrome removed.'”

“I always felt I had to fill silences, usually by singing or whistling. It was nerves and shyness, really.”

“My approach to painting doesn't involve any heavy thinking about how am I going to present this, what am I going to do.”

“I hope that maybe I am on this planet to try and spread a bit of love and affection and to try and help people to warm toward their fellow man instead of all this destruction and misery.”

“It's essential that you make eye contact with your audience. You've got to know what's happening out there.”

“I was being singled out as the best in the class at this, that and the other, nearly always to do with art. And then I was a very good swimmer from a very early age, and once again the best in the class, and when I was about five or six, I was the best in the school.”

“George Martin recorded a lot of my stuff before the Beatles, so I observed their meteoric rise.”

“Try and spread a lot of love and affection around the world. The most important thing is not to 'con' the public. Be real.”

“I had always been told by my parents, not implicitly told, but every inference was that Britain was the hub of the universe.”

“If I could go back in time, I'd return to when my parents were alive and appreciate them more than I did when I was growing up.”

“People say 'Are you going to retire?' To me, that sort of equates with lying down and dying. When you're doing something you love to do, why would you stop?”

“When I was presenting 'Animal Hospital,' the grey started to creep into my beard and moustache. I used my wife's mascara to darken it.”

“I draw the line at filth and crude language. It seems to be an excuse for not being funny.”

“I love the word 'fantastic'. It represents how I always feel.”

“The Avalanches was a great dance track, I thought, but I always feel a little bit let down when there are just two lines repeated constantly. Over and over. Forever.”

“As I walked up the imposing steps of the Royal Academy, I came fact to face with Alwen Hughes. She looked just as stunning as she had done in my first year at art school.”

“I regard myself as being enormously lucky to have been accepted by the British public in so many areas.”

“Prison is no hardship, really. I'm in the art room as an assistant to the tutor, and basically, I'm doing what I like.”