Rick Astley has become a surprising favourite from this year's Glastonbury. The Never Gonna Give You Up singer performed his set on the Pyramid Stage before joining pop band, Blossoms for a surprise appearance which sent fans into a flurry.
It was the first time Rick had performed at Glastonbury in his almost 40 year music career and he was sure to make it memorial. The 57 year old already won the crowd as he opened the Pyramid Stage on Saturday afternoon with his catchy hits and covers from the likes of Harry Styles and AC/DC.
He then went on to surprise fans even further as he made a surprise appearance with the Blossoms on the Woodsies stage in a tribute performance to The Smiths. Viewers at home and the Glasto audience went crazy for it and even went on to say that he "won" Glastonbury.
As he takes the UK's biggest festival by storm we take a closer look at his life off stage…
Rick Astley hails from Lancashire and gained worldwide fame during the 1980s when he released several hits including the likes of Never Gonna Give You Up, Together Forever and Whenever You Need Somebody. He met his wife, Lene Bausager who is a film producer in 1988 – soon after finding fame.
At the age of around 27 he took a six-year break from music and in that time welcomed his daughter, Emilie in 1992 with Lene. Emilie who is now 31 years old reportedly lives in Denmark and is a landscape gardener.
After a six-year hiatus, he returned to music full-time and started recording again. In 2016 he released his album 50 to celebrate his milestone birthday.
Rick told the BBC in 2018 that the album was in fact inspired by his wife who helped give him the confidence to release the album. He said: "She probably had more belief in 50 than I did, to be honest.
"I don't mean that I was negative about it. I was just being realistic saying, 'Why is anybody going to let a 50-year-old guy in the building?'
"But she produces movies and she can see a path from a script to actually getting a movie on a screen – and she's done that with the music.
"The success I'm having is due to her, there's no doubt about that. She's a massive part of the whole thing." It was clearly worth it as the album went straight to Number One in the UK.
Rick and Lene live in East Molesey, Surrey where they have remained since 2013, the same year the pair tied the knot. He reportedly calls the house Astley Towers which comes with its very own studio.
The singer sensation also previously told The Times: "You wouldn’t pull up outside my house and say, ‘Oh my God, some 1980s pop star lives there.’ It’s not ostentatious.
"It’s a bit of a Tardis, it’s bigger than it looks and I’ve got a studio in the garage…
"I’ve had small boats for 10 years. I really enjoy drifting down the river for an hour with a mate, drinking a bottle of wine or going down the pub."
During his Glastonbury performance, Rick gave a closer insight into his love of music and upbringing. Taking to the drums to play AC/DC’s Highway To Hell during his Pyramid performance he told the crowd: "When I was a kid, my first experience of being in a band was playing the drums. I’ve had many dreams in my life. One of my dreams has been to perform at Glastonbury – that dream has come true today.
"Maybe even possibly bigger, which I don’t know how it possibly could, is for me to play drums to the first record that I learned to play the drums too."
He continued: "I was a 15-year-old kid in my dad’s greenhouse, and I played this album to death, I broke this record learning the drums to it. Ladies and gentlemen, will you please join in, this is AC/DC."
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