The Queen has sat for more than 130 portraits by artists as diverse as Pietro Annigoni, Philip de Laszlo and Lucian Freud, but few would have predicted the royal favour being extended to a popular illustrator famous for tending sick dogs and singing about kangeroos accompanying himself with a wobbleboard.
But while the sophisticated Annigoni reportedly lost his nerve when entering the magisterial presence and the accomplished Laszlo was awed by the grandeur of Buckingham Palace, Rolf Harris, the affable outback oddball, remained perfectly calm - until, that is, he picked up his brushes and realised he would be unable to break into his old bom-de-bom-bom singing routine.
'At home in my studio or when I'm painting on television, I soothe my tensions through that old habit, but bom-de-boms somehow didn't seem quite so appropriate in Buckingham Palace,' admitted Australia's enduring export. 'Without that outlet, I have to admit that my nerves were near breaking point.'
In an industry in which stars reinvent themselves every few years and where personal trauma is a marketing opportunity, Harris has been the exception. There have been no makeovers, battles with the bottle or bitter divorce. He's still doing what he's always done: playing his wobbleboard, being kind to dumb animals, doodling and repeating the line: 'Can you tell what it is yet?', the title of his autobiography, as he entertains with his paintings on television.
The only thing that has changed about Harris during his half century in the public eye is our reaction to him. Since he first appeared on our television screens in 1954, Harris has been able to walk into rooms, certain in the knowledge that he would be the least fashionable person there. In the past few years, however, Harris has been able to luxuriate in the unexpected accolade of being the hottest ticket in town.
Harris was born in western Australia in 1930 to Welsh emigre parents, Crom and Marge Harris, and remembers wanting to be a painter from an early age. 'My parents encouraged me like mad,' he said. 'My father was a frustrated painter, my grandfather was a portrait painter in Wales and by the age of three, I was saying that I was going to be a painter and a good one at that.'
A talented sportsman, the young Rolf was junior backstroke champion of Australia by the age of 16 and narrowly missed being selected for the London Olympics two years later. Art, however, remained his passion and, aged 23, he emigrated to Britain to study at the City and Guilds of London Art School in Kennington. It was, he admits, a wake-up call. 'The encouragement [at school in Australia] was wonderful but I became very big-headed about my artistic abilities,' he said. 'When I went to art school in England, I got a very rude shock.
'I was on a foundation course, so I was being judged on every kind of art and they told me I was no good at figure drawing,' he added. 'It was such a blow to my self-conceit. I'd gone from being the best in my class at my previous school to somebody who was only regarded as average.
'But I eventually got my confidence back, and since then, I've never lost that thrill that every child knows, of taking a blank sheet of paper and seeing a painting developing right in front of me.'
Despite the shaky start, Harris's final year at the school was a success both professionally and personally: his final- year project was selected for the Summer Exhibition and he met Alwen, his future wife. Unable to choose between his various talents for drawing, telling stories and singing, the young graduate looked to the wider world of entertainment, discovering in children's television the perfect opportunity to hone his eccentric presenting style.
'No one really cared about children's TV in those days,' he has said. 'You were able to learn your trade and make mistakes. If you had any nous, you could learn what to do, and that's what I did for six years.'
A varied career followed, where quirky records (including 'Two Little Boys', whose unlikely fans include Margaret Thatcher and Russell Crowe, and 'Sun Arise', later covered by Alice Cooper) were interspersed with broad-brush painting on his own TV shows.
His interest in finer art, however, never went away. His source material is the thousands of photographs that he has taken over the past 40 years because he 'thought they would make a good painting'.
Harris had his first hit in 1960, with the song 'Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport', based on a Harry Belafonte calypso, which he followed with the camp classic, 'Two Little Boys'.
By 1971, he was famous enough to be the subject of This Is Your Life (he has since appeared twice more). In 1973, he staged his introductory concert at the Sydney Opera House and, in 1979, launched himself on to the big screen with The Little Convict, in which he appeared as Jake the Peg (after another of his hit songs).
The experience seems to have given him a taste for acting and throughout the Eighties, he embraced pantomime with a passion. He has since starred in 15 different versions of Cinderella'.
A lower point in Harris's career, even according to staunch supporters, was his 1993 cover of Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway to Heaven', which, predictably, featured a didgeridoo solo. Though the record reached number seven in the UK charts, even Harris admitted some years later that he regretted the decision.
'I was in Sydney when I was asked to appear on Andrew Denton's TV comedy show, The Money or the Gun, to sing "Stairway to Heaven",' he explained. 'The show had already featured about 19 different versions... I had never heard the song before, but I performed it, having only seen the sheet music. When I finally heard the original version, I thought: "Oh my God... what have I done?"'
But by cementing Harris's reputation for naffness, the song unexpectedly secured him a cult status which, in turn, led to a 1998 invitation to sing at Glastonbury. It was, Harris has said, a booking that was likely to have been tongue-in-cheek: 'I think they booked me as a joke; they put me on at 10am on Sunday morning, thinking everyone would still be asleep.
'Instead, more than 70,000 people turned up and sang along to every single word of my songs. There were women holding banners saying "Rolf, will you didgeridoo me?" It was hilarious.'
Shortly afterwards, Radio 1 DJ Zoe Ball discovered a modern use for the trademark panting Harris did when he painted; inviting him on to her radio show to, as Harris put it, 'do that heavy breathing thing I do' over a dance track for five minutes.
'I was so exhausted that when I finished, I nearly fell over,' he added. 'I was a guest on the last Live and Kicking she did with Jamie Theakston and I did a painting of them. But when I saw her a few weeks later at a charity do, I tried to sell one of my dance tracks to her husband, Norman Cook, and he wasn't interested.'
Harris has now performed four times at Glastonbury, last year sharing the main stage with rock heroes the Prodigy, and was invited by Kate Bush to make a cameo appearance with his didgeridoo on her album, Aerial
But just as his musical career was enjoying a renaissance, Harris found his attention returning to art. He began painting again in earnest and, in 2004, Paul Green, managing director of the Halcyon's Birmingham gallery, visited Harris at home and discovered his hidden stash of canvases.
'I was gobsmacked, to put it mildly,' said Green. 'The whole home was based around art. His work, in true Rolf fashion, was stuffed all over the place. Then we went out to his carport and there were paintings sitting outside with cobwebs, footprints, slugs and whatever. He has great talent.'
At the Halcyon exhibition, Harris's works were snapped up for sums exceeding £125,000, making him one of Britain's most bankable artists, on a par with Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst.
This popular success has not won him the respect of the British arts establishment. When his phenomenally successful BBC1 series, Rolf on Art, was commissioned, John Tusa, managing director of the Barbican Centre, called it proof of a 'headlong rush [by the BBC] to a flight from intelligence'.
Lord Bragg, presenter of ITV's arts flagship The South Bank Show, recently accused the BBC of a 'dereliction of duty' for failing, through its use of Harris as a presenter, to take the arts seriously, while TV critic AA Gill condemned both the man and his work as 'remorselessly and screamingly naff'.
'He is a difficult man to hate,' Gill conceded, 'but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.'
Harris is artless enough to admit such comments upset and confuse him. He is, he says, at a loss to understand why anyone should react to him so violently. 'They are entitled to their opinion, but some of the attacks I have received over the years have been vicious and personal and they hurt.'
Now 75, he is able to say: 'I know who I am and what I like to do, and all I ever wanted was to splosh around with my brushes and palette and show people that painting can be fun. My advice is to just do something you love to do.
'You need to do something that means you wake up with a smile on your face, and look in the mirror and say, "I really love you, son. Good on ya. Get on with it!" I just feel about 20, still.'
Rolf Harris
DoB: 30 March 1930
Jobs: Painter, entertainer, portraitist
Education: Bassendean State School, Perth Modern School, University of Western Australia, Claremont Teachers' College
Family: Married to Alwen, a sculptress (one daughter)