Rod Stewart says Scotland winning the World Cup is more likely than an Elton John collaboration

Rocker insists pair still ‘adore each other’

Sir Rod Stewart has claimed it’s more likely that Scotland’s men’s football team wins the next World Cup than he will collaborate with Sir Elton John.

Over the past few years, the two veteran musicians engaged in a public feud, though this has reportedly been settled, with Stewart insisting that he and John “still adore each other”.

Speaking to PA, Stewart was asked about the prospect of a future collaboration with the “Crocodile Rock” artist.

“No chance,” he responded. “Scotland have got more chance of winning the World Cup than that ever happening. No, we don’t talk at all now. If we talk, we do it through the press.

“I will say something and the press will pick up on it. He will say something and the press will pick up on it. But I don’t even think I have got his mobile number any more.”

Bookmakers’ odds on Scotland winning the 2022 World Cup currently range between 250 and 1000 to one.

Addressing their good-natured professional rivalry, which dates back to their early success in the 1970s, Stewart added: “It went on for years and years and years. I think we still adore each other. I think we have just grown apart like lovers do sometimes.

“He has got his two boys and he doesn’t drink any more. That was almost like a bond in the old days. Not the two kids but [the drinking]. He is living a clean life now. As I am, somewhat. I still like my drink every night.”

Stewart and John fell out in 2018 after the “Maggie May” singer said John’s extensive farewell tour “stinks of grabbing money”.

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In his 2020 memoir Me, John shot back, writing that he would not accept a lecture on the “feral spirit of rock and roll” from a man who had “spent most of the last decade crooning his way through the Great American Songbook and ‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas’”.

Additional reporting by PA