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Rocketman Sir Elton John has paid tribute to his proudest addiction, admitting: “ Watford might have saved my life.”

Lifelong fan Sir Elton had two spells as chairman spanning 26 years, and his double act with Hornets godfather Graham Taylor presided over five promotions, finishing runners-up behind champions Liverpool and reaching the FA Cup final in 1984.

Now, in his long-awaited autobiography, the great showman lays bare the importance of Watford on his life.

He reveals how fellow rock star Rod Stewart, who called Elton by his pet drag name ‘Sharon’, ridiculed his decision to join the board in the mid-1970s.

Stewart, whose drag name was ‘Phyllis’, laughed: “What the f**k do you know about football, Sharon? If you knew anything, you wouldn’t support this lot.”

(Image: PA Archive/PA Images)

He cheerfully recalls his ticking-off from another famous resident of Windsor, the Duke of Edinburgh, who lambasted him for driving around a royal estate in an Aston Martin painted in Watford colours - yellow with a red and black stripe down the middle.

“Ridiculous. Makes you look like a bloody fool. Get rid of it,” chuntered Prince Philip.

And Sir Elton remembers another dressing-down when he turned up for a Boxing Day fixture at Watford “hungover after a mammoth coke bender” and helped himself to generous measures of whisky from the boardroom.

(Image: Zuma Press/PA Images)

The man delivering the lecture, in no uncertain terms, was Taylor, Watford’s greatest manager, who died in January 2017.

But the magic carpet ride Taylor navigated was worth more than winning football matches. Sir Elton wrote: “I’m incredibly proud of what we achieved together, but I owe Watford far more than Watford owe me.

“If I hadn’t had the football club, then God knows what would have happened to me. I’m not exaggerating when I say I think Watford might have saved my life.

(Image: INTERNET PICTURE)

“I was chairman throughout the worst period of my life: years of addiction and unhappiness, failed relationships, bad business deals, court cases, unending turmoil. Through all of that, Watford were a constant source of happiness to me.

“For obvious reasons, there are chunks of the eighties I have no recollection of – but every Watford game I saw is permanently etched on my memory.

“The night we knocked Manchester United out of the League Cup at Old Trafford, when we were still a third Division side, the newspapers that never normally bothered about writing about Watford were calling them Elton John’s Rocket Men the next morning.

(Image: Getty Images)

“The night in November 1982 when we were away to Nottingham Forest in the Milk Cup: They beat us 7-3 but I thought it was one of the greatest games of football I had ever seen in my life.

“Forest’s legendary manager Brian Clough agreed with me, before turning to Graham (Taylor) and telling him he would never allow his chairman to sit on the bloody touchline the way I did.”

With hilarious self-deprecation, the Hornets life president also remembers the grand old game’s backlash when he revealed he was gay.

On reflection, he came to realise it was a brave announcement for the new chairman of a football club who spent his Saturday afternoons listening to rival supporters serenading him with an unflattering refrain to the tune of My Old Man Said Follow The Van.

Instead of delivering a lecture denouncing homophobia in football, Elton admits: “I have to be honest: I thought it was funny, Mortifying, but funny.”

*Me Elton John, published by Pan Macmillan, £25 hardback.