If Rod Stewart is all over your timeline right now, that might be because he’s just been announced as Glastonbury Festival’s first 2025 act.
Or then again, it might be because he’s such a stand-up guy. From fixing potholes to mucking around with toy trains, there’s a lot to love about the veteran crooner – and that’s before we get into the seemingly never-ending range of hits that have spanned decades.
With Stewart getting ready to play the Legends slot next year, here’s a list of reasons (as if we needed any more) why we love him so.
Pothole fixing
Living in the Essex countryside can be a dangerous game for a man who has a massive sports car collection.
“Because of the potholes on our roads, I may have to find new owners for them,” Stewart moaned during one interview, but there’s also the second option: taking matters into his own hands. Stewart has actually carried out road repairs to the potholes around his house in Harlow: the videos of him doing DIY in a high-vis vest in 2022 quickly went viral.
"This is the state of the road near where I live in Harlow and it's been like this for ages,” he said in the clip, shovelling stones into a pothole to fill it.
"So me and the boys thought we would come and do it ourselves.” A true hero.
His police officer wife
Penny Lancaster shot to fame as a model and reality TV star, but she’s since enjoyed something of a career pivot – these days, she’s a volunteer special constable for the London Met Police.
She joined the force in 2020 after catching the bug during the filming of Famous and Fighting Crime in 2019, where celebs are paired with police officers on their rounds.
"When you think of policing, you think of the most violent crimes but we’re out there to help the most vulnerable," Lancaster has told Good Morning Britain about her change in career. "At this particular time there’s a lot of incidents on the bridges and I did help someone who was very desperate on the bridge the other night."
She added that she found the work to be “rewarding in so many ways."
His dress sense
Rod Stewart has never been treated as a fashion icon in the same vein as Mick Jagger or his fellow rockers, but maybe that should change. He’s always been a fan of a bold style – leopard print leggings, spandex onesies and open-chest shirts were his go-tos during the 70s and 80s – and these days, not much has changed.
Stewart reliably delivers on statement-making outfits. Just look at the shiny silver suit he wore for a 2022 gig in Ontario, Toronto – or indeed the stripes and polka-dot outfit that was debuted this June for a holiday with his kids.
Or the time he went to a gala with Prince William. While William wore an all-black tux, Stewart opted for something a little snazzier in the term of a leopard print jacket and matching shoes. I mean, what’s not to love?
He’s still partying
Too old to go out? Hardly – Stewart has made no secret of the fact that he plans to party well into his 90s.
“I’m not so far short of the drinking we did in the Seventies,” he told the Evening Standard. “The band all sit around after the show for a few drinks. The girls are on the whisky and the guys are coming round to it.”
He added to the Sun that he still celebrated after each show with his band.
“I’m not like I was in the ’70s and ’80s and I can’t stay up all night, get drunk and go mad and still have a voice just like that. Nowadays I have to protect my voice before and after every show.
“The older you get, the more you have to do that. Water has a hell of a lot to do with it. But no, you think I just have water on my rider?
"You’re talking to Rod Stewart here, mate. We go mad after every show. There are 13 of us, six women, really great musicians and I make them drink. We absolutely love it.”
He loves model trains
Yes, you read that right: Rod Stewart can’t get enough of tiny trains. In 2019, he revealed to Railway Modeller magazine that he had been working on creating a massive model of a US city, based on New York and Chicago around 1945 – which he’d been building for the last 23 years.
"I would say 90% of it I built myself," he told Jeremy Vine’s BBC Radio 2 show afterwards. "The only thing I wasn't very good at and still am not is the electricals, so I had someone else do that."
Stewart worked on constructing the skyscrapers and scenery whilst on tour – to the extent that he often asked hotels to provide an extra room for him to tinker in.
"We would tell them in advance and they were really accommodating, taking out the beds and providing fans to improve air circulation and ventilation," he said, adding, “a lot of people laugh at it being a silly hobby, but it's a wonderful hobby.”
He’s a die-hard football fan
Apart from model trains, Stewart does have another hobby: Glasgow’s Celtic football team. And despite his Edinburgh-born father (which inspired a love of the Scotland football team), Stewart didn’t fall for the Hoops until he was in his 30s.
“To all intents and purposes I am English. I’ve never pretended I never said I was a Scotsman, so let’s get that out of the way,” he told Talksport, adding that he fell in love with Celtic after meeting the team’s then-manager Jock Stein in 1973.
“We just did a show with The Faces in Glasgow, and they all came to wake me and Ronnie [Wood] up to get us to go training. Ronnie didn’t get out of bed, but I went and I met Jock Stein. He looked at me and he laughed at my shoes. And since that day, I’ve become a Celtic supporter.
“I was so enamoured by him, you know, this huge guy was just brilliant.” He’s added that supporting Celtic is his only ‘indulgence’, to the extent that he’ll splash out on a private jet to go see them play in Glasgow.
"I would never have a personalised numberplate," he told GQ in a 2013 interview. "I'd be asking for trouble. It's hard enough being who I am, let alone advertising it on a numberplate… mind you, if I could get Celtic 1, I'd probably buy it."
