Most people go to Las Vegas expecting to lose a bit of money, but only Rod Stewart can manage to lose money by not going there in the first place.
The croaky-voiced sperm machine was ordered by a federal jury yesterday to pay back £1 million that he received for a cancelled new year’s concert.
We can’t decide if a joke about Nobody Loves You When You’re Down And Out or a joke about I Don’t Want To Talk About It would be more appropriate at the moment…
Rod Stewart (CDs) was contracted by Harrah‘s to perform a special new year’s concert at the Rio casino resort on December 30th 2000.
However, the concert never took place.
There was, Stewart assumed, a very good reason for not performing –
he had an operation for thyroid cancer a few months before. At the
time, Rod thought his career might be over. He told the jury "I was petrified, I was scared. This was my livelihood."
Since the
operation, however, Rod Stewart has gone from strength to strength. He
has performed over 150 concerts since he recovered, and has won his
first-ever Grammy.
However, instead of paying back Harrah’s for the no-show, Stewart
kept the money and offered to play a couple of concerts for them. The
Vegas bigshots rebuffed him, claiming that two random concerts would
never generate as much revenue as a special new year’s show.
After three hours of deliberating, jury foreman Stevan Jorgensen
told Stewart to return his fee, plus undisclosed interest. He said:
“We felt it was only fair that if Mr. Stewart didn’t perform the concert that he should give the money back.”
Harrah’s are "delighted", Stewart plans to appeal.
It’s not the first time in recent months that Rod Stewart has been
ordered to repay fees for cancelled shows. back in November he was
ordered to pay $780,000 plus a further $1.6 million for nixing a tour
of Latin America in 2002.
Still, the man’s got about three million kids, we’re sure they’ll help support him.
Read more:
Do ya think I’m guilty? Stewart must pay – MSNBC
[story by Stuart Heritage]