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Rod Stewart: 'I bought Elton a novelty fridge'

Oct 6, 2012, 10:01 GMT

Rod Stewart

Rod Stewart once bought Sir Elton John a novelty fridge.

The 'Maggie May' singer has been good friends with the legendary star since they played the same clubs in the 1960s and as a Christmas gift he gave him a special refrigerator that lit up and had an automatic door, but was surprised when in return Elton gave him a painting by Rembrandt.

He said: 'I thought long and hard about the present I was going to give him. That's always a tough one, 'What do you get the man who's bought himself everything?'

'Eventually after a bit of scouring around the shops I lit upon a solution, a novelty portable fridge. Brilliant. You plugged it in and pressed a button and its door opened automatically and it lit up and a bottle rose out of it in a cloud of vapour.

'Elton's present to me that year: a Rembrandt. A drawing - The Adoration of the Shepherds. A f**king Rembrandt!'

Despite feeling 'pretty small' about his novelty gift, Elton took it as a laugh and referred to it as an 'ice bucket'.

Writing in his autobiography 'Rod', being serialised in the Daily Mail, he added: 'I felt pretty small - although presumably not as small as Elton presumably wanted me to feel when he later tartly referred to my present as a 'ice bucket'. It was not an ice bucket. It was a novelty portable fridge.'