Rolf Harris death: entertainer jailed for sexually abusing girls dies aged 93 - what was cause of death?

Disgraced TV host and entertainer and convicted sex offender Rolf Harris has died.

The 93-year-old had been "gravely ill" with neck cancer since last October, and had been receiving 24-hour care after losing his ability to eat. A registrar at Maidenhead Town Hall has confirmed his death to the PA news agency on Tuesday (23 May).

According to his death certificate, he died nearly two weeks ago - on 10 May - of neck cancer and “frailty of old age” at his home in Bray, Berkshire. A family friend had told the Daily Mail his health had taken a turn for the worse some time ago, and a private ambulance photographed outside his home the day he died.

A statement from his family, released through his solicitor, said: “This is to confirm that Rolf Harris recently died peacefully surrounded by family and friends and has now been laid to rest. They ask that you respect their privacy. No further comment will be made.”

Australian-born Harris had been a family favourite in the UK for decades, best known for long stretches presenting Rolf's Cartoon Club and Animal Hospital. His career, which included shows on both BBC and ITV and a brief stint back in Australia, spanned 60 years - from the early 1950s until his arrest in 2012.

Harris's children-oriented TV shows were usually centred around art and drawing, but he wrote a number of hit songs. He is credited with inventing the wobbleboard, and was a proficient didgeridoo player, playing the Aboriginal Australian instrument in a number of Kate Bush songs. He created iconic characters like Willoughby and Jake the Peg, and painted an official 80th birthday portrait of the late Queen Elizabeth II in 2005.

But Harris became a focus of the Metropolitan Police's Operation Yewtree investigation in 2012, which investigated sexual abuse allegations - primarily involving children - against British media personalities. The operation was launched after Top of the Pops host Jimmy Savile's death, when dozens of people came forward with complaints about his sexual abuse at BBC premises, spanning decades.

In late 2013, Harris was charged with nine counts of indecent assault, involving two girls aged 14 and 16, which dated back to the 1980s, as well as four counts of producing indecent images of children in 2012.

He was later found guilty of 12 charges of indecent assault on four female victims during the 1970s and 1980s, and a year after his arrest - at age 84 - he was jailed for five years and nine months. Harris was released after just three years behind bars, and one charge - alleging he indecently assaulted an eight-year-old girl who wanted his autograph - was overturned.

The disgraced entertainer was denied permission by the courts to appeal the other convictions, and his legacy was forever tarnished - with reruns of his shows pulled from networks, and many of his titles, honours, and awards stripped away.

Harris is the subject of a new ITV documentary called Hiding in Plain Sight - which premiered on ITVX on 18 May. The two-part documentary chronicles the rise and fall of the TV host, and the story of victims, including one who gave permission for the effects of her abuse to be discussed via her psychotherapist.

The woman - a friend of his daughter - had been sexually abused by Harris from the age of 13, which went on for a number of years. Her psychotherapist said: "Her choice was to not say anything about it, but it caused her a lot of trauma and was instrumental in causing her to misuse alcohol as a way of anaesthetising that trauma… a momentary respite from having to carry that burden all the time.”

Suzi Dent and Karen Gardner, two alleged victims who have waived their right to anonymity, were also featured on the programme. In the first episode of the two-part series, Australian makeup artist Dent alleged that Harris sexually assaulted her in 1985, when she was 23 and working on a show he appeared on.

Gardner said that while she was carrying Harris’s bag on the Cambridge set of Star Games in 1978, she was assaulted three times in plain view over the course of 35 minutes. At the time, she was 16 years old.

After the jury could not reach a verdict at two trials, Harris was acquitted of assaulting Gardner. Dent’s allegations of assault were not tried in court because they took place outside of the UK.