'I won't take disgraced names off Comedy Carpet'

The artist who created Blackpool's award-winning Comedy Carpet has rejected demands to remove controversial names from the famous artwork.

Gordon Young was speaking after renewed calls were made to get rid of the name of the late entertainer Rolf Harris, who was jailed in 2014 after being convicted of indecent assaults on four women.

Eddie Fewings, from Blackpool, said it was inappropriate to have a convicted sex offender's name on a family attraction and it should be cut out and replaced with another name.

Buy Young said when he was designing the attraction "I made up my mind that I couldn't make moral judgements on all these entertainers. If you start doing that, where does it end?"

"Some of these people were lovely but some of them were not nice people, let's be honest," he said.

"What they all had in common, though, was that they made people laugh, they brought humour into people's lives and made a real difference.

"I agree that what Rolf Harris did was despicable and I do sympathise with what the gentleman has said, but I can't agree with this thing we have now, where some people start trying to change works of art because we've decided we don't like the people who made them."

Harris is included in the installation because he, in common with all the other entertainers featured, performed in Blackpool, appearing in a summer show in the 1980s, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

With more than 850 names across an area of 23,600 sq ft (2,200 sq m), the polished floor covering in front of Blackpool Tower has been described as one of the largest public art installations ever created in the UK.

Fewings, said: "There's no place for Rolf Harris and his name should have been removed years ago.

"When I spoke to the artist he got pretty angry about it and said it wouldn't be changed."

The Comedy Carpet was first unveiled in 2011 and includes a plethora of well-known catch phrases and gags.

A Blackpool Council spokesperson said: "Mr Harris's acts were despicable but his name being on the carpet in no way condones those acts.

"At the time of the Comedy Carpet being created and installed there was no reason to question the inclusion of Rolf Harris.

"His name appears on the Comedy Carpet along with a thousand others due to his links to comedy sketches and songs.

"There are no references to his work other than his name."

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