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Staff at a hotel in Perthshire were delighted over the New Year period after they received a £10,000 Hogmanay tip from none other than Sir Rod Stewart.
The “Maggie May” singer rang in 2024 at Gleneagles Hotel, a luxury residency with three golf courses, a spa and a two Michelin star restaurant, with his wife Penny Lancaster Stewart and their two sons.
After staying at the five-star hotel, Stewart, 78, left staff a hefty £10,000 tip as a thank you – along with a tip about the Scottish national football team.
“I’ve been lucky enough to stay in some of the top hotels in the world and the service at Gleneagles is second to none,” he told The Daily Record.
“The staff do a terrific job at a very hectic time of the year and deserve every penny. It’s Scottish hospitality at its very best.”
Stewart added: “I advised the boys and girls at Gleneagles to invest the money wisely: stick the lot on Scotland to win the Euros.”
Stewart’s father came from Edinburgh, and was a life-long supporter of the Celtic and the Scottish national team.
The musician and his wife had watched Celtic play on Saturday (30 January), with the pair celebrating with cocktails in the hotel’s bar as the team beat Rangers 2-1.
Lancaster Stewart also posted a photo to Instagram of her husband and sons in matching kilts, which she captioned: “First ever #hogmanay boys are proud of their Scottish heritage.”
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Stewart’s act of kindness closed off a year in which he paid for scans for patients at his local NHS hospital in February in order to cut waiting times.
In January, the singer called into a live phone-in segment on Sky News to criticise the government’s handling of the NHS crisis, during which he offered to donate money for medical scans after hearing stories of lengthy NHS waiting lists.
Stewart fulfilled a number of acts of kindness in 2023
(PA)
“I personally have been a Tory for a long time but I think this government should stand down now and give the Labour Party a go, this is heartbreaking,” he said.
The following month, Stewart visited Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, Essex, where he’d paid for the scans. Stewart said that he’d come by to ““prove I’m not all mouth and trousers”.
He explained: “I had just come from my scan in a private clinic near Harley Street. I walked in and said, ‘I’m terribly sorry, I’m half hour late.’ They said, ‘Don’t worry, there’s hardly anybody in here today. There were eight people with hardly anything to do.’ Then I thought this is a terrible injustice, so here we are.”
The rocker said he would like to pay for scans elsewhere too, saying: “If this is a big success, which I think it will be, I’d like to do it in Belfast, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, and just keep it going, and hope some other people follow me.”
