Rolf Harris is one of the most endearing entertainers of all time, one of the nicest men in show business and one of my personal all time heroes. So it is with great sorrow that I am about to lambast his choice of eyewear.
If there were any way around it, I would take it, it’s just that his persistent misdemeanour against spectacle designers all over the world can go on no longer, something has to be done.
I saw Rolf on Jonathan Ross a few weeks ago where he was putting his animal-friendly name to a ‘Stop the Seal Cull’ event in Canada. A worthy cause without question, but as I sat there watching him pant like a dog and wobbling a piece of metal, my fond chucklings were interrupted with the realisation that Rolf was wearing the most horrendous spectacles.
It couldn’t have always been like this, could it? How had one of my favourite entertainers flown under the radar for so long? I decided to do a little digging and found photos of a young Rolf in a fantastic pair of black acetate frames. So what went wrong? Was it simply a case of getting old?
OAPs are not famed for their excellent choice of eyewear and I generally find the silver generation fall into three main categories:
? Rich and rimless
? Eccentric, mad fashion hunters
? Poor and don’t care.
By this thinking, Rolf is either a fashion revolutionary and his specs are destined to come back in fashion – one glance at the picture above should answer that one – or something is not quite right with my assumptions of the pensioner power. Rolf is not poor, and the masterly trimming of that beard shows he obviously still does care about his appearance. This only makes his crime worse!
The type of frame he favours is of a size to accommodate old-fashioned lens technology. I suppose there could be an argument for the IMAX sized field of vision the frame gives to Rolf, but beyond that I see no real excuse for anyone wearing this frame in the 21st century. Even Deirdre Barlow got new specs 14 years ago.
Over the past week I’ve noticed that Rolf is not alone with this type of eyewear crime, amazingly there is a large proportion of the population who still seem to be stuck in 1982.
If anyone knows who provides Rolf’s eyewear, please let me know, it’s surely not your fault, you were just giving him what he asked for, I know, I know, no recriminations here, it’s the OAPs who need educating! Perhaps it’s time Rolf was called to action once again.
A stint on Jonathan Ross for Jake the Peg wearing a fantastic new pair of spectacles promoting his latest crusade might just do the trick. It’s not an animal cause but perhaps I can get him to agree by tapping his artistic aesthetic side on ‘Government subsidies for expensive designer spectacles!’ (vouchers only valid for British designers who write for Optician).
Tom Davies is an eyewear designer and founder of TD Tom Davies. For more details visit www.tdtomdavies.com