Revealed: Rod Stewart's F-bomb reaction to his children's unexpected gesture at 2025 American Music Awards
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Rod Stewart got the surprise of a lifetime when five of his children made a surprise appearance at the 2025 American Music Awards on Monday to present him with its Lifetime Achievement Award.
The 80-year-old singing icon was so shocked to see his family there in person that he dropped an F-bomb that was edited out of the broadcast.
'I'm so f***ing overwhelmed that you're here,' Stewart said lovingly to his kids, according to DailyMail.com's reporter at the ceremony.
However, the version that aired on CBS featured a clumsy cut away from Stewart during his cursing to a bizarre shot of audience members, who were holding up their phones to film his speech.
Instead of beeping the profanity, CBS appeared to just snip out the offending word, resulting in a jarring return to his speech mid-word.
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Stewart said he was 'absolutely flabbergasted' because he had no idea that his children were going to be attending the ceremony, much less giving him a warm introduction.
'I thought you had recorded it earlier!' he said of their introduction.
The Maggie May singer also managed to get in a risqué joke that the censors weren't as concerned about.
'I've got eight [kids] all together,' Stewart said, before quickly adding, 'I didn't have a television.'
'That was a little joke,' he said sheepishly to chuckles from the audience.
'When I started singing in the early '60s, well before all of you lot were here, the reason I got into it [was] because I had this burning ambition to sing,' said Stewart, who also listed some of his major singing influences, including Muddy Waters and Sam Cooke. 'It's all I wanted to do. I didn't want to be rich or famous, and here I am a few years later, picking up this wonderful award.'
He concluded his brief speech with a performance of his classic tune Forever Young.
It was an epic version of the song, featuring a middle section that highlighted his female backing musicians and tap dancers.
![The Maggie May singer also managed to get in a risqué joke that the censors weren't as concerned about. 'I've got eight [kids] all together,' Stewart said, before quickly adding, 'I didn't have a television'](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/05/27/07/98777355-14752237-The_Maggie_May_singer_also_managed_to_get_in_a_risqu_joke_that_t-a-67_1748328145901.jpg)
After a brief tap solo, his two fiddle players performed a duet with a marching bass drum accompaniment before reprising Forever Young for the dramatic finale of the AMAs.
Joining Stewart at the ceremony were five of his eight children, including Kimberly, 45; Sean, 44; Ruby, 37; Renee, 32; and Liam, 30.
Among the children who missed out on the performance was Stewart's oldest child, his 61-year-old daughter Sarah Streeter.
In a 2010 interview on The Joy Behar Show, Stewart explained how he and Sarah's mother, his ex-girlfriend Susannah Boffey, weren't in a good position to take care of their child.
'She was put up for adoption when I was 17 or 18, I think,' he recalled. 'I was absolutely stone broke … and so she was put up for adoption.'
Although he apparently wasn't a part of her life when she was younger, Stewart said he began to take on a larger role after the death of Sarah's adoptive parents.
'We've tried to come together and be close together, and it's working out pretty well,' he shared. 'I never felt like I was her dad, because I didn't take her to school, change her nappies, there was no paternal thing there, but I'm trying.'
Stewart's other two absence children were his two youngest sons, 19-year-old Alistair and 14-year-old Aiden, both of whom he shares with his current wife, Penny Lancaster, whom he married in 2007.
The Da Ya Think I'm Sexy? singer's older children Kimberly and Sean are both products of his first marriage to Alana Collins, which lasted from 1979 to 1984.
He welcomed his daughter Ruby with his ex-girlfriend Kelly Emberg in 1987, and he shares Renee and Liam with his second wife, the model Rachel Hunter, whom he was married to from 1990 to 2006.
The 2025 AMAs aired live on CBS, with Jennifer Lopez hosting. Fans can also stream the awards show on Paramount+ in the US.
This year marked the first time the AMAs ceremony was shown on CBS, as it had previously aired on ABC since 1974.
This year's event also marked the first time the show aired live since 2022, following a hiatus due to ABC's Grammys contract expiring at the time.
