Rod Stewart says he gargles rum and coke before every show and only wants two items on his Glastonbury rider

Veteran rocker Rod Stewart has revealed he always gargles a swig of rum and coke before going on stage and has maintained the pre-show ritual for the past 40 years.

The 80-year-old singer, who’s set to play the Legends Slot on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury Festival this June, said he doesn’t drink the beverage on any other occasion.

He told Radio Times: “The vocal cords need a lot of looking after. I mean, they’re absolute gold.”

Back in May, Stewart was spotted wearing a sign around his neck that read, “Sorry. Cannot talk. Having vocal rest,” while on holiday in Italy with his wife, Penny Lancaster, 54.

“When I feel I’m losing my voice, I go into what they call ‘voice rest,’” he explained of the practise. “It’s remarkable how your voice will come back.”

Ahead of his Glastonbury performance, Stewart revealed he wanted the items on his rider to remain very minimal and had been aghast at the amount of food brought to him ahead of past performances.

“I looked at it the other day and I thought, what is all this s*** doing here?” he said. “All I need is a few bottles of wine and some crisps, and that’s it. And there’s all these bloody things!

“What am I gonna do with them? No hummus, but big piles of bananas and apples! And when you think the whole world’s bloody starving. I gotta do something about that.”

Stewart’s vocal rest last month came after he reportedly spent five hours at Ronnie Drew’s Irish Bar in Krakow, Poland, following Arsenal’s Champions League defeat to PSG.

Onlookers told The Sun, “Rod might be an octogenarian, but he can still party like he’s in his 20s. When he left, he had to be steered out by his minders and was stumbling a bit. The punters in the bar loved it and were cheering for him.”

Stewart who cancelled three shows in Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and Lincoln, California, in January after being diagnosed with strep throat and testing positive for Covid, will take to the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury on Sunday 29 June with a 90 minute set from 15.45pm to 17.15pm.

“It is a different gig,” he said of the forthcoming performance. “It’s like when you’re playing a cup final: you’re trying to treat it like another game. But, of course, it’s not. It’s special.’