VETERAN rocker Sir Rod Stewart has apologised for making what appeared to be a video parody of a beheading in the desert similar to those filmed by Daesh.
A video posted on social media showed the 72-year-old singer strolling across sand dunes with a group of friends he is travelling with on his world tour, which took Rod to Abu Dhabi on Thursday.
Stewart is seen in the video leading a line of friends along the sand dunes, with model wife Penny Lancaster at the back. Lancaster, 45, rolls down the dunes, and then stretches out on the sand. Rod then has one friend kneel on the ground while he makes a cutting motion across his throat in an apparent mock execution.
The clip, with the caption “Rod Stewart (leader) band doing a ‘Beatles’ sand dune crossing,” was posted on social media on Lancaster’s Instagram page but has now been deleted.
Stewart has offered his “deepest apologies” and insisted he was just “larking about” before his performance at an arena concert in the capital of the United Arab Emirates and reenacting a Game of Thrones scene.
In a statement, the star said: “From re-enacting the Beatles’ Abbey Road crossing to spontaneously playing out Game Of Thrones, we were simply larking about pre-show. Understandably, this has been misinterpreted and I send my deepest apologies to those who have been offended.”
Stewart has garnered criticism for his actions which have been labelled “deeply stupid” and “clueless” on Twitter. Executions carried out by Daesh militants have shocked the world. Aid worker David Haines, 44, was the first Briton beheaded by Daesh in a video – by executioner Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwait-born Briton as known as “Jihadi John”. Emwazi appeared in a succession of grim online videos in which Western hostages are beheaded.
Former hostage John McCarthy said the singer had turned “a grotesque thing into a kind of pantomime”. The journalist, who was kidnapped in Lebanon in 1986, said it was unclear whether Stewart was “larking about” or thinking seriously about the fate of some hostages.
Relatives of kidnap victims would be “absolutely sickened” if the star was making light of their plight, he said. “Your blood runs cold just imagining what it must be like to be in that situation in the last moments of your life or, indeed, as relatives to see that,” he added.
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