Fredric Russell Harty (5 September 1934 – 8 June 1988) was an English television presenter of arts programmes and chat show host.
Early life
Harty was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, the son of greengrocer Fred Harty, who ran a fruit-and-vegetable stall on the local market, and his wife Myrtle Rishton. He attended Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School in Blackburn. Thereafter he studied at Exeter College, Oxford, where he obtained a degree in English literature.
Among Harty's pupils at the Giggleswick School were the journalist and television presenter Richard Whiteley and the actors Graham Hamilton and Anthony Daniels. In the mid-1960s Harty spent a year lecturing in English literature at the City University of New York. One programme involving a "meeting of cultures" saw Harty travelling to Italy in 1974 to engineer an encounter between the entertainer Gracie Fields and the composer William Walton, two fellow Lancastrians then living on the neighbouring islands of Capri and Ischia. A documentary on Salvador Dalí ("Hello Dalí"), directed by Bruce Gowers, won an Emmy. Another award-winning documentary was "Finnan Games" (1975) about a Scottish community, Glenfinnan, where "Bonnie Prince Charlie" raised his standard to begin the Jacobite rising of 1745, and its Highland Games.
After establishing himself on Aquarius, Harty persuaded LWT to let him present a chat show, Eleven Plus. During the interview, Harty asked Bolan what he thought he would be doing when he was forty or sixty years old; Bolan replied that he didn't think he would live that long. (Bolan subsequently was killed in a car crash at age 29 on 16 September 1977).
Also in 1972, LWT gave him his own series, Russell Harty Plus (later simply titled Russell Harty), In 1973 and in 1975 he interviewed David Bowie. In 1975, he also interviewed Alice Cooper, who called the experience "the best TV show I ever did". Other high-profile show business figures interviewed by Harty included Danny Kaye, Rudolf Nureyev, Rita Hayworth, Diana Dors, Elaine Stritch, Ralph Richardson and Oliver Reed.
He remained with ITV until 1980, His first show was an arts programme, All About Books, but after a pause his chat-show activities resumed. Jones has said she was sleep-deprived and had taken "bad coke" before the interview, at one point hallucinating that Harty was her abusive step-grandfather. She has also said she found him condescending. Joined later on stage by other guests including Walter Poucher and Patrick Lichfield, Harty was compelled by the set's seating arrangement to turn his back on Jones for an extended period. The incident generated so much press coverage that Harty later joked the headline for his obituary would read "Grace Jones Man Dead". before being moved to an early evening BBC1 slot in September of that year; it was now simply titled Harty. The show ended in December 1984, though Harty would continue to present factual programmes for the BBC for some time afterwards.
He was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1980, when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the London department store Selfridges while dressed as Santa Claus giving out presents to children.
In 1986, he interviewed Dirk Bogarde at his house in France, for Yorkshire Television. Some journalists thought the programme intrusive; His last show, Russell Harty's Grand Tour, was broadcast by BBC-TV in 1988.
On 1 March 1987, The News of the World ran an article exposing Harty as homosexual and claiming he used rent boys; the paper sent a male prostitute with a hidden tape recorder to his flat. In the hope of further revelations, reporters converged on Giggleswick, sat on Harty's doorstep, went through his dustbins, chased his car, forced their way into the school where he had once been a teacher, and even attempted to bribe the local vicar. Harty's career and his popularity were not immediately affected by the coverage, Nonetheless, the incident was controversial, and was one of several instances cited in the debate about journalistic ethics in Britain that led to the Calcutt committee.
Harty was a friend of the playwright Alan Bennett, whose first cabaret performance (while they were students at Oxford) was at a show Harty put together. Bennett spoke of Harty's friendship with Bennett's own family, in the essay "Written on the Body" taken from his autobiographical collection Untold Stories:
Death
Early in May 1988, Harty became ill with hepatitis B. He collapsed and was admitted to the intensive care unit at St James's University Hospital, Leeds. Scrutiny from tabloid newspapers continued while Harty was seriously ill: they claimed that the disease was "related to an HIV/AIDS" infection, something his family and the hospital authorities denied to the press. His body was buried in the graveyard of St Alkelda Church at Giggleswick. At a memorial service at St James's Church, Piccadilly attended by Harty's friends and colleagues from showbusiness, Alan Bennett commented in his eulogy that "the gutter press had finished Harty off." A Daily Mail article quoted Jamie O'Neill as taking slight issue with Bennett's version of events, suggesting that Harty was only motivated by a need to make as much money as he could before retirement, although O'Neill did recall Harty saying when the first tabloid articles about him appeared, "I'm finished". Another memorial service, for family members and local friends, took place at Blackburn Cathedral where Harty had once been a server. His friend Michael Parkinson delivered the address, and told the media, "Russell was a very funny man and a damn sight nicer than anyone who wrote about him".