Rod Stewart has as many questions for me as I do for him, says Neil McCormick in The Daily Telegraph. The 76-year-old singer wants to know what music I’ve been listening to, where my suit is from and, most important, how my sex life is. “Come on, it’s only fair,” says Stewart. “You’re asking about mine.”
Sex is one of his specialist subjects. From the age of eight he was obsessed with girls, clipping pictures of Marilyn Monroe out of newspapers: “It’s just the way I’m put together.” He lost his virginity at the 1961 Beaulieu Jazz Festival, to a woman he met in a beer tent. That’s what inspired him to write Maggie May, the song that made him a star. Sixty years on, he’s “madly in love” with his third wife, Penny Lancaster, and has eight children, but he’s still fascinated by women. His latest single, One More Time, is about sleeping with an ex – which the singer claims he’s never done. “When I’m finished with a woman, that’s it, finished. I’m pretty good like that. But we’ve all been tempted.”
If his lyrics are revealing, Stewart is not the slightest bit embarrassed. “I’m just reminding everybody that sex should be fun. I’ve always sung about it. Always. Somebody has to do this job, and I’ve done it!” Besides, celebrities aren’t owed private lives. “I was reading about that 007 geezer [Daniel Craig] complaining about fame and all his privacy’s gone. Well, why the f*** did you come into this business?” Stewart just wants to have fun. “What a glorious job. Best job in the world. I can’t think of a better one.”