star and Express columnist has opened up about her tense encounter with paedophile TV presenter .
The TV presenter was working on Big Breakfast at the time and was excited to learn she would be interviewing Rolf Harris, famous for his show Animal Hospital.
The iconic TV show featured presenters conducting interviews on a bed, and Vanessa penned in her new autobiography Vanessa Bares All Frank, Funny and Fearless that Rolf "oozed affability" as he climbed on the bed with his wife Alwen just a few feet away.
She penned: "On air, Rolf was jokey and full of beans. Then I heard a scratchy sound. It was the noise of the beads on my dress being crunched together as he gathered up the fabric at my ankles and started pulling it further and further up my legs.
"I tried wriggling away from him. The bed was smaller than a real one. There was nowhere to go. I put the cushion I was leaning on between us. It made no difference. Rolf kept talking. His hand kept moving. His adoring wife was three feet away. We were live on TV. He was laughing as if everything was completely normal.
"I couldn't yell: 'Rolf Harris is assaulting me!' I didn't want to upset Alwen and disturb our viewers. His hand curved round to my inner thigh."
Breaking the rules, Vanessa took the show to an unscheduled break and then carried on the interview with Rolf as if nothing had happened.
She added: "I didn't make a complaint. I didn't want to ruin his marriage. I was fine, really, and this is crucial: I didn't know Rolf was doing the same thing to other women, underage girls, children. I didn't know his wife was often a hovering presence. I didn't know he had ever behaved like that to any woman except me."
Vanessa said that she tried to forget about the incident until the police knocked on her door in 2013 over Operation Yewtree.
They had the footage of the interview with Rolf from 17 years earlier, and Vanessa spoke to them about it. She concluded: "In the end, I was never asked to appear in court.
Harris, who died in 2023, was convicted of sexually assault four underage girls in 2014, serving three years in prison.
Adapted extract by Jane Warren from Vanessa Bares All: Frank, Funny and Fearless, by Vanessa Feltz (Transworld, £22), published October 24. To order for £19.80 visit or call Express Bookshop on 020 3176 3832. Free UK P&P on online orders over £25.
