Rod Stewart is at home in his Essex mansion, beaming in a cardigan and a Celtic FC necklace. His spiky hair is as you would expect and takes just moments to perfect. Apply product, dry upside down, add wax. I spot some model trains and ask if they are part of his famous replica of a 1940s US city.
“Oh, that’s over yonder,” he says in full rasp, pointing to another part of his home. I call it a train set, and he interrupts. “I get offended if you call it a train set. It’s a scale model railroad, if you please.” But it started as a train set? “Yes,” he says, smiling. He began collecting as a boy in Highgate in the 1950s. “I
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