After 19 years, I finally got it: my second photo with Rod Stewart

Miracles do happen. In 2006, I was on holiday in Düsseldorf, celebrating my father's birthday. As luck would have it, the TV show Wetten dass... was taking place at the Düsseldorf Exhibition Centre the following day, and a certain Rod Stewart was announced as a guest that evening. He was there to promote his newly released album ‘Still The Same - Great Rock Classics Of Our Time’.
With the newly purchased CD in my bag, I made my way into town with the aim of getting it autographed. I soon found out that Sir Rod was staying at the Hotel Intercontinental on the famous Königsallee.
First, I took a seat at a table in the lobby and waited. However, I had no idea whether I had chosen the right hotel, as there was no indication that Rod was staying there. But I wanted to make sure I wasn't on the wrong track, so after a good cup of coffee and a few biscuits, I explored the surroundings.
To the left of the hotel entrance was the entrance to the hotel's underground car park, and I decided to take a closer look. On the lowest parking deck, I spotted a black van with tinted windows all around. Was I on the right track?
There was no indication of that yet. But it could well be the car that would later drive Rod to the exhibition hall. It is located right next to the stadium, the Merkur Spiel-Arena, as it is called today. The stadium and exhibition hall are a good 15 minutes' drive from the city centre. In heavy traffic, it takes about 20 minutes.
I was sure that this van was not in the garage for no reason, and I put all my eggs in one basket. As it was still early afternoon, I treated myself to another coffee in the lobby and observed my surroundings.
At some point, one or two autograph hunters appeared. This was the first sure sign that I was in the right place. I chatted to one of them and he confirmed that Rod Stewart was supposed to be staying at this hotel.
This was another good sign, because these semi-professional autograph hunters, who turn up everywhere and often drive normal fans crazy with their intrusive collecting, are usually well informed. They have friends in the press who give them information about celebrities in town, they have fellow collectors who provide them with information about all kinds of celebrities from all corners of the world, and most of the time, all this information is as reliable as the fact that the sun rises every day.

As happy as I was about the information provided by the autograph hunter, I was equally certain that it would become my biggest problem. Because, if at all possible, I wanted to approach Rod Stewart alone to get my coveted autograph on the CD. With the crowd of autograph hunters nearby, that was almost impossible.
But what annoyed me at the time turned out to be a stroke of luck that evening.
I still intended to approach Sir Rod on my own if possible. However, another check of the van in the underground car park confirmed that this plan was definitely not going to work.
Some of the autograph hunters had already gathered on the lowest parking level, all at a safe distance, but with a direct view of the van and the hotel entrance.
It would be difficult to get close to Rod, I thought to myself, and pondered how I could get around the problem. So I concocted a heart-wrenching story about how my dad was a big Rod Stewart fan (which he actually was), that it was his birthday tomorrow and I wanted to give him a signed CD as a present. That's why I wanted to wait in a quiet place so I could meet Rod alone and get the album signed.
With this story, I marched to the reception desk and demanded to speak to the hotel manager. He even came out of his office and listened to my touching, but semi-fictional story. I had secretly expected him to throw me out of the hotel immediately. But no.
He confirmed that Rod had indeed checked into the Intercontinental (is he even allowed to do that?) and gave me the unofficial tip that I should wait in the stairwell to the car park, where Rod would later walk down and go to the waiting van. Aha! Was the van really parked there for him?
I did as I was advised and stood in the stairwell to the underground car park in front of the door that led to the parking deck where the van was parked. After about two hours of waiting, something happened. Two people came down.
Was it Rod? No, it was actually two of the autograph hunters who had had the same idea as me. What the hell... I really didn't need that. But in fact, the appearance of these two would turn out to have a happy ending for me.
And so the waiting continued. At least I now had two people to chat with, which made the wait much more pleasant. One of them had a camera with him and said he really wanted to take a photo with Rod, if possible. Of course, that would be a big highlight for me too, so I asked if he would take a photo of me with Rod as well, if possible.

In my experience, autograph hunters are not usually very cooperative. But Heiko, who had come to Düsseldorf from the Ruhr region especially for this, was different. He agreed immediately and promised to take the photo.
And then the big moment arrived. We heard noises coming from above us in the stairwell. We could clearly hear footsteps on the stairs and people talking. And then he appeared: Rod Stewart was standing in front of me. Heiko immediately approached him and asked for a photo. Rod, in a good mood, stopped right away and signed my CD while we waited. I seized the opportunity and asked him for a picture too. While he was still signing the other autograph hunter's LP, he nodded briefly to me and we were already standing next to each other in position. Heiko pressed the shutter button on his camera and the picture was taken.

And then the real drama of this story began. Since we were still in 2006, a time when it wasn't so easy to send pictures back and forth via a messenger service like WhatsApp, Heiko and I exchanged addresses. He promised to send me the photo in the next few days. Yes, and that was it.
To this day, it is now 13 September 2025, I have not heard from him, let alone received the photo. And then this morning at 8 o'clock, I received this message on Facebook Messenger. From a certain Heiko. Who the hell is Heiko, I thought?
He wrote that we had met in Düsseldorf in 2006 and that he had taken the photo of me and Rod Stewart back then. But he had never been able to send it to me because he had lost the piece of paper with my address on it. Fortunately, he had digitised all his old photos in the meantime, so my photo with Sir Rod had never been lost. I just didn't have it.
But that changed today – after almost 19 years. He emailed me the snapshot from the Düsseldorf underground car park this morning and yes, for the past few hours I have actually been in possession of two (!) photos showing me with Sir Rod Stewart. Christmas and Easter on one day couldn't be any better than today, 13 September 2025.
The photo is already one of my favourite pictures of the year, even though I look pretty ‘shitty’ in it (at least I think so) and I could only make the picture public after running it through a few filters in an image editing programme to improve the somewhat poor quality. But at least I finally have it – after 19 years. Once again, my thanks go to Heiko, who stumbled across my Facebook profile by chance and actually remembered that evening in the underground car park of the Hotel Interconti in Düsseldorf.

I would like to conclude this story with an appeal. An appeal to the photographer from the Koblenz daily newspaper ‘Rhein-Zeitung’ who was in Koblenz in 1993 for Wetten dass... and captured the moment when I presented Rod Stewart with a signed football in a photo. Yes, I never got that photo either. But maybe I'll wait another 19 years and then I'll get that one too...