Lakeside Country Club have removed a picture of Rolf Harris that had been hanging on the wall at the iconic darts venue.
The club is one of the oldest and most iconic venues in the sport, and only last weekend did it host the latest big event on the recently formed World Seniors Circuit. The Masters was won by Canadian David Cameron, who defeated 16-time world champion Phil Taylor in the final.
Numerous other legends took part in the event, including Keith Deller, John Lowe, Bob Anderson and John Part as they rolled back the years to the the excited crowd. However, an unwanted photo emerged from the tournament after Lowe tweeted an innocent picture alongside the gallery of celebrity photos.
“Nice to be here in flesh, and still in the gallery at Lakeside,” tweeted Lowe in front of a montage of many of the players and entertainers who have performed at the venue.
Unfortunately, the gallery still included a photograph of disgraced entertainer Harris, a convicted sex offender who was jailed for five years and nine months back in 2014 for 12 indecent assaults between the 1960s and 1980s. With his career in tatters, Harris was also stripped of the honours he was awarded throughout his career - including the Order of Australia and the CBE.
Lakeside responded to a query by Daily Star Sport asking if the photo of Harris would be removed. Joanne Potter, director of the company and daughter of Lakeside owner Bob Potter, swiftly declared she did not realise a picture of Harris was still on show and insisted she would remove it immediately.
“We’ve got hundreds of pictures,” Potter said. “It's like seeing an old piece of furniture every day, you don't notice it when you're actually here.
“We will take a look around and see if we can locate it. We've got no problem taking it down. We don't want people like that on our wall.”
Lowe took to Twitter to confirm the photo had been taken down following the alert by the Daily Star. The three-time world champion wrote: “Well, we made the Daily Star for maybe the wrong reason, after having my pic taken against the gallery of famous entertainers, it was observed by a keyboard warrior, the disgraced Rolf Harris was on there, I can report Lakeside Management have removed it.”
