Rolf Harris, the disgraced entertainer, has been cleared of three sex charges after a second trial.

A jury took just under a week to find the 86-year-old Australian not guilty of three of the seven alleged assaults said to have taken place over four decades, following a second trial at London's Southwark Crown Court.

Harris is currently in jail following a 2014 trial which saw him convicted of 12 sex offences against four female victims, one aged as young as seven or eight.

But his defence team claimed the jury in the first trial had "got it wrong" and that the media frenzy had "without doubt made him vulnerable to people making accusations against him".

The pensioner declined to give evidence at his second trial, instead silently watching proceedings first on video from Stafford prison and then later from the dock with a hearing loop.