As a young musician, Rod Stewart’s support for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament saw him join the Aldermaston Marches and get arrested at sit-ins – but he now admits this stance was more about making love than stopping war.

‘We used to all go on the CND marches', he said. ‘I used to do it to get shagged. I didn’t care about the war actually.’

Sir Rod, who has been married three times, enjoyed success with the fairer sex despite confessing that his personal hygiene in the early 1960s left a lot to be desired.

Disarming charm: Rod Stewart enjoying a drink with a friend before a concert in 1975

‘It was just rebellion, that’s all it was,’ he told BBC2’s Reel Stories. ‘You had to be smelly, though. You had to wear corduroy trousers for months and it really smelled. Don’t change your underpants. It was disgusting.’

The lack of pride in his personal appearance did not, however, extend to his famous hair.

‘On the Tube, all us were going down there holding on our bouffant haircuts because when you go down the escalator the train comes in and there’s an awful wind that comes up.

‘So [there would be] six or seven of us all going down holding our hair. Even then I used to have it back-combed.’

The 74-year-old also reflected on his friendship with Sir Elton John, whom he got to know in the 1960s but with whom he has now fallen out after branding the Rocket Man singer’s three-year retirement tour a ‘moneygrabbing opportunity’.

Stewart, pictured aged 16, with a CND sticker on his guitar

‘We really were mates in those days,’ he told presenter Dermot O’Leary. ‘Really close friends. We’re not talking nowadays. He has got the hump with me now.’

Asked if the rift could be healed, he replied: ‘Yeah, it could, but we’re both very stubborn, so neither of us call each other.’

Sir Rod, who recently became the oldest male performer to top the album charts, insisted he will never announce a retirement tour.

‘I think that’s when you start thinking “I’ve got nothing to do” … I don’t want retirement. I refuse to use the word.’

He hopes to reunite with the Faces, with whom he enjoyed success in the 1970s, for a concert to mark their 50th anniversary, and revealed that he always carries photographs of former bandmates Ian McLagan and Ronnie Lane with him.

McLagan died of a stroke in 2014, aged 69, and Lane succumbed to pneumonia while in the final stages of progressive multiple sclerosis in 1997 aged just 51.

‘Every time I do a concert, I have pictures of them down on the stage because I owe them,’ he said. ‘They were my dear mates, they helped me get started because the start of my career was a bit of a stop-start – join one band and then join another, then join another, but with the Faces, it really took off.’