Confusius: I hear they’ve let that Rolf Harris go, then.
Exasperus: Let him go?
Confusius: You know. After all them sexual assaults he done. They’ve let him go.
Exasperus: Why did they let him go?
Confusius: ‘Cos his barrister got him off.
Exasperus: Defended him successfully, you mean?
Confusius: Exactly. Defence barrister. Shouldn’t be allowed.
Exasperus: What, having a defence barrister?
Confusius: If he was innocent, he wouldn’t need one would he?
Exasperus: (looking in paper) It says nothing here about letting him go.
Confusius: Yeah, they’re going to let him go.
Exasperus: Going to? You said they already had!
Confusius: Well, you know. Same thing.
Exasperus: It says here he’s going to be released on licence on July 19th.
Confusius: Yeah.
Exasperus: Which is when he was always going to be released.
Confusius: How’s that five years then?
Exasperus: How’s what fi-
Confusius: He got banged up in 2014. How come he’s getting out on July 19th, if he got sentenced to five years nine months?
Exasperus: Well, that’s normal. You get released after half of your sentence.
Confusius: What?
Exasperus: It’s standard practice for moderate sentences to release people after they’ve served half of it.
Confusius: Well – why didn’t they give him double then?
Exasperus: …
Confusius: Answer me that, why didn’t they give him double? That way, they’d make sure he served the full five years and nine months?
Exasperus: You wanted him to get eleven years and six months?
Confusius: Yeah. For what he did. It’s disgusting. Kiddie fiddling pervert. He’s no better than that Tony Blackburn.
Exasperus: Jimmy Savile.
Confusius: Mind you, at least he did stuff for charity.
Exasperus: Yes, I suppose he did.
Confusius: Raised money for all those poor people in Stoke Newington.
Exasperus: Mandeville.
Confusius: Marvellous really. All those Marathons he ate.
Exasperus: Ran. He ran marathons.
Confusius: They wanna call them Snickers now, though, don’t they?
Exasperus: I’m not even sure Rolf did it.
Confusius: What? That’s disgusting that is. You defending him?
Exasperus: Well, no, he’s got a barrister to do that.
Confusius: Shouldn’t need one. Shouldn’t need one if he’s innocent, should he?
Exasperus: Thing is, I think he probably is innocent.
Confusius: He had sex with his daughter!
Exasperus: His daughter’s friend.
Confusius: That’s just as bad!
Exasperus: Well, it isn’t as illegal.
Confusius: Isn’t it? If she’s 13?
Exasperus: Well, it’s illegal if she was 13, but was she?
Confusius: She said she was.
Exasperus: Yes, she also said she was still sleeping with him when she was 29.
Confusius: So? She’s allowed to do that, isn’t she?
Exasperus: Yes.
Confusius: Don’t start shaming her for having an active sex-life.
Exasperus: With the man she says was abusing her from the age of 13.
Confusius: Well, why would you lie about a thing like that?
Exasperus: I have no idea. But the fact that I can’t think why someone should lie about something doesn’t mean that the thing they might be lying about must necessarily be true.
Confusius: …
Exasperus: (reads) Oh, now I get it. He’s been acquitted of these new charges.
Confusius: Yeah, but he’s going to have to go back anyway.
Exasperus: Where does it say that?
Confusius: They’re going to do him for them again.
Exasperus: No, there were some charges the jury couldn’t decide on.
Confusius: Well, he must be guilty then. If they had a reasonable doubt.
Exasperus: No, you acquit if you have a reasonable doubt.
Confusius: That’s not fair though, is it?
Exasperus: <sigh!>
Confusius: That defence barrister he’s got, he said that the original jury got it wrong. Well, imagine how they must feel.
Exasperus: Is that the most important thing?
Confusius: You turn up for jury service, you’ve had to take time off work, you don’t get no money for lost pay, oh no…
Exasperus: Yes you do.
Confusius: …then you have to spend all your time in a draughty courtroom listening to all the sordid details of some old bloke’s fiddlings with little girls….
Exasperus: He wasn’t old then, and anyway…
Confusius: …then when it’s finally all over, and you think you can go home, you get crammed into a stuffy little room with a load of other people who you don’t know from Adam, and you’re not allowed to go home until you’ve found the bloke guilty.
Exasperus: Or not guilty.
Confusius: Hmmm?
Exasperus: You could find him not guilty instead.
Confusius: Oh. Oh! Yes, I suppose you could. But either way, there’s always someone who ain’t going to change their minds and stuff, no matter how long you sit there and talk about it.
Exasperus: Hmmm.
Confusius: So you do all that, just doing your duty and stuff, and then some barrister comes and tells you you got it wrong.
Exasperus: Appalling.
Confusius: It is appalling.
Exasperus: Trouble is, he was probably right.
Confusius: Well, he’s got to say that, ain’t he, otherwise the jury in this new case is going to be biased against him.
Exasperus: Rolf was never at the place where one of the attacks happened.
Confusius: Says who?
Exasperus: An entire absence of any adduced evidence.
Confusius: I don’t even…
Exasperus: One of the girls couldn’t remember whether she was 13 or 17 when the attack happened, and changed her mind to suit the facts. The judge didn’t mind.
Confusius: Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen though, did it? Anyway, how can anyone be expected to remember what happened forty years ago? I know I can’t.
Exasperus: But she said it was a traumatic experience.
Confusius: I bet it was. Eurgh, those hairy hands!
Exasperus: His hands aren’t hairy.
Confusius: Imagine it. You’d never forget that, would you?
Exasperus: Nor how old you were when it happened.
Confusius: And there’s that one he groped in a pub. Underneath the tablecloth.
Exasperus: Oh, yes, the one that sold her story to the Australian press?
Confusius: Look they can’t all be making it up, can they?
Exasperus: Why not?
Confusius: That’s ridiculous! Why would anyone do something like that? He was a nice man, he was, before they started saying this stuff about him. Good with kids. It’s disgusting to think he was pretending all the time.
Stuff I Reckon 