Disgraced entertainer, 85, feared to have fallen ill after gorging on chocolate and sweets in jail

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Rolf Harris has been taken to hospital amid fears about his health.

The 85-year-old former children’s entertainer, who is diabetic, is feared to have fallen ill after gorging on chocolate and sweets in jail, according to the Daily Mirror.

Harris, a convicted paedophile, was taken from Stafford prison, where he is serving nearly six years for carrying out a string of sex attacks, to Stafford hospital.

Singer Vince Hill, 81, told the newspaper that he had heard from one of Harris’s friends that he had “sort of overdosed on chocolate”.

He added: “According to him, that was the scale of the problem ... he didn’t know he was eating too much chocolate.”

Harris was jailed for five years and nine months in July 2014 after being found guilty of indecently assaulting four girls.

One of his victims was just seven or eight years old and hoping to get an autograph when he groped her.

He molested two other young teenagers, and carried out a catalogue of abuse against his daughter’s then best friend, whom prosecutors said Harris groomed from the age of 13 and used like “his little toy”.

Sentencing Harris at London’s Southwark crown court last year, Mr Justice Sweeney told him: “You have shown no remorse for your crimes at all. Your reputation lies in ruins, you have been stripped of your honours, but you have no one to blame but yourself.”