Sir Rod Stewart helped staff at a hotel in Perthshire start 2024 on the right foot after he left them a £10,000 tip.
The Maggie May hitmaker celebrated the New Year at the five-star Gleneagles Hotel with his wife Penny Lancaster and their two sons, Alastair, 18, and Aiden, 12.
During their stay, Lancaster, 52, 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.”
Clearly overjoyed by the hotel’s hospitality, Stewart, 78, thanked staff at the end of their trip with a £10,000 tip – and advised them to bet the lot on Scotland winning the Euro 2024 Championships.
He told The Daily Record: “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.
“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.”
Referring to his tip, he said: “I advised the boys and girls at Gleneagles to invest the money wisely: stick the lot on Scotland to win the Euros.”
Scotland have been drawn with the hosts Germany, alongside Hungary and Switzerland, in the group stage of summer’s Euros.
Stewart’s father hailed from Edinburgh, and despite the singer being born and bred in London, he has been a life-long supporter of Celtic football club as well as the Scottish national team.
Gleneagles is popular with celebrities in part thanks to its three championship golf courses. Guests have included Queen Elizabeth II, John Travolta and Sir Sean Connery.
The star’s generous act closed off a year where he paid for people’s medical scans at his local NHS hospital after hearing stories of lengthy NHS waiting lists.
Last January, the singer offered to donate money to help cut their waiting times after he phoned-in to Sky News to criticise the government’s handling of the NHS crisis.
Then in February, Stewart visited Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, Essex, where he’d paid for the scans.
The star said that he’d come by the hospital to “prove I’m not all mouth and trousers”.
He said at the time: “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.”
