BBC ban Rod Stewart from singing Grace

Rod Stewart has revealed that the British Broadcasting Corporation banned him from singing Grace during a live acoustics session on the Chris Evans show.

The 73-year-old has just released a new album which includes the moving ballad relating to the execution of Joseph Plunkett by the British forces in 1916.

In 2011 the Queen of England was comfortable paying her respects to the leaders of the 1916 Rebellion but it seems that the facts and history of those events are still too uncomfortable for the British state broadcaster to admit to.

In an interview with Billboard Stewart explains:

 I’m doing a live acoustic set on BBC Radio on Friday morning, the biggest show across the land. And I asked if I could do “The Killing of Georgie,” which, as you know, is about a homosexual friend of mine. Well, he was a friend of the Faces, who was murdered in the ’70s. I thought it would be OK now because they banned it when it first came out ( Editor’s Note: The BBC did eventually play it). And I asked if I could sing it and they said no, it was too controversial. This was 1976 and now we’re in 2018… Unbelievable.

Also, they won’t let me sing “Grace” because of its Irish, anti-English overtones in the song. Forget about it, it’s one of the greatest love songs ever written. The guy goes to his death 15 minutes the next morning after he’s been married and I can’t sing that one either. 

What did you think the first time you heard “Grace”?

Celtic is the football team I support, and Celtic was formed by an Irishman in Glasgow in 1888 to raise money for the Irish to come over after the Potato Famine, so I heard the Celtic supporters singing it about three years ago.

Did you have it in the back of your mind that it would be on this album? 

Oh yeah. I went over to Dublin and did my homework. I visited the jail and went into the chapel  where it all happened. So it means a lot to me, that one, it really does. There was no furniture in the jail apart from the bed of jail, no table, no bed, no chair, nothing. Just sat on the floor, and the glass that was there when I visited wasn’t there in those days, so the wind and the snow came straight into the cell. Man’s inhumanity to man never stops to astonish me.

Celtic fans adopted Grace at the start of the 2015/16 season with social media taking it to every corner of the globe.

A recording of the song by Jim McCann on You Tube has been viewed over 6,300,000 times in the last nine years.

Make 7 predictions on the Celtic v Aberdeen  match.

You must choose one prediction as your BANKER, which scores DOUBLE POINTS if correct!

For an extra £1, you can play the Progressive Jackpot. Answer all 7 questions correctly and you win the Jackpot of £7,500+

CLICK HERE to join in