Sir Rod Stewart "Why I Don't Feel Singing About Sex” Awkward

The singer, 77, is campaigning about menopause, helping Ukrainians, and has turned down a fat cheque to play in Qatar—but he hasn’t lost his cheeky sense of humour

- Jonathan Dean

Rod Stewart is at home in his Essex mansion, beaming in a cardigan and a Celtic FC necklace. His spiky hair is as you would expect and takes just moments to perfect. Apply product, dry upside down, add wax. I spot some model trains and ask if they are part of his famous replica of a 1940s US city.

“Oh, that’s over yonder,” he says in full rasp, pointing to another part of his home. I call it a train set, and he interrupts. “I get offended if you call it a train set. It’s a scale model railroad, if you please.” But it started as a train set? “Yes,” he says, smiling. He began collecting as a boy in Highgate in the 1950s. “I wanted a station,” he says. “But Dad bought me a guitar.” And here we are.

You can catch him on tour in the UK until late December 2022. He plays all the hits you would want from his years with Faces and his epic solo career. Are there any old songs that make him feel… “Awkward?” Exactly. “No. I went through a brief period of thinking I’m not going to sing ‘Hot Legs’, because it is a sex song, but what do I finish with? ‘Hot Legs’. And people love it. There is nothing I feel uncomfortable singing.”

I believe him—although few 77-year-olds would dare to sing about cavorting with a schoolgirl and, maybe, her mother. His latest album even has the line “The sex was immense”. But this is who Stewart is: an entertainer who is as open and authentic as his voice is distinctive.