TV Presenter Speaks Out About Uncomfortable Encounter with the Disgraced Entertainer
Ulrika Jonsson has claimed that the late Rolf Harris groped her during an incident early in her career when he appeared as a guest on a show she was working on. Harris, who died on May 10 at the age of 93, was once a beloved figure in British entertainment before being convicted of numerous indecent assaults in 2014.
In a column for The Sun, Jonsson, now 55, detailed how the incident took place while she was working as a weather presenter on the ITV breakfast show TV-am. She recalled how, upon meeting Harris, who was a guest on the programme, she felt “flattered” at first, but then uncomfortable when Harris embraced her and allegedly groped her. “I remember thinking that was either really flattering or a bit forward. Either way, it was confusing,” Jonsson wrote.
She continued: “Then his hand travelled down to my bum, gave it a few squeezes and stayed there for what felt like years but was probably only 30 seconds. But it was long enough for my 21-year-old self to feel deeply uncomfortable, and speechless. I know I won’t have been the only one who fell victim to his hands.”
Jonsson reflected on how such incidents were often ignored at the time, particularly when dealing with celebrities, noting that “people didn’t pipe up or call anyone out.” She added, “We may have come a long way in making that kind of behaviour unacceptable, but we still have miles to travel.”
Following Harris’s death, other women have also come forward with similar stories. Presenter Vanessa Feltz shared her own experience of being groped by Harris during a live segment of The Big Breakfast in the 1990s. Feltz recalled how she could hear Harris “scrunching up” her dress while she was conducting an interview, stating that, at the time, she felt powerless to do anything about it.
Harris was convicted in 2014 as part of the Operation Yewtree investigation, which was launched in the wake of abuse claims against Jimmy Savile. He was sentenced to five years and nine months for 12 indecent assaults between 1968 and 1986. Though some of his convictions were later overturned, his legacy was forever tarnished. Harris died at his home in Bray, Berkshire, from neck cancer and “frailty of old age.”
