80s pop star still on top form as he rocks out to AC/DC on drums-Emily Bashforth-Entertainment – Metro

Rick Astley has still got it! (Picture: Backgrid)

Rick Astley shot to fame in the 1980s with his pop tunes – and he’s showing no signs of slowing down. In fact, he’s putting on more energetic shows than ever.

No stranger to a festival, the Never Gonna Give You Up hitmaker, 58, delighted fans this weekend when he performed his hits in a headline set at Camp Bestival Shropshire.

Electric guitar in hand, the pop icon had all the moves.

Rick looked seriously slick, dressed in a suave wine-coloured suit and his hair perfectly coiffed for the adoring crowd at Camp Bestival Shropshire.

The big surprise came, however, when he took to the drums to play an AC/DC classic.

Highway to Hell is probably the last song one would expect to hear during a Rick Astley set, but it certainly got revellers rocking.

The pop star got the crowd rocking as he performed AC/DC’s Highway to Hell on drums (Picture: Camp Bestival: Solent Productions)

The 80s icon looked dapper in his wine-coloured suit (Picture: Farrell/Backgrid)

He told the crowd: ‘I played the drums in my dad’s greenhouse and I dreamed of being in front of a massive audience with a Ferris wheel and some beautiful lights and a gorgeous audience.

‘And all they wanted to do was rock and sing, baby! And here we are.’

Hyping festivalgoers up, he teased: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to rock?’

Rick screamed: ‘Do you want it? Scream for me if you want it!’

After the lively crowd was well and truly warmed up, Rick banged his drumsticks to count in the tune before playing the instrument with ease.

Camp Bestival – running from August 15 to 18 – boasted a stellar line-up this year, as McFly, Paloma Faith, and Jake Shears were just three stars joining Rick in performing.

Rick headlined a stellar line-up at Camp Bestival in Shropshire (Picture: Farrell/Backgrid)

Of course, he played Never Gonna Give You Up (Picture: Farrell/Backgrid)

Gok Wan and Sara Cox also performed DJ sets, there was comedy from Maisie Adam, and even family fun from Dick and Dom.

Rick’s performance comes after Never Gonna Give You Up celebrated its 37th anniversary last month.

Despite launching Rick to stardom and becoming the best-selling single of 1987, spending five weeks in the charts, the singer didn’t always love it.

In fact, he said it was ‘s**t’.

Speaking earlier this year to The Sun, Rick said people just blindly sing along at festivals.

Being ‘brutally honest’, he confessed: ‘If I’d been singing Never Gonna Give You Up and a few others for 30 years, I think I’d have driven myself mad.’

He previously said people just ‘blindly sing along’ to his music at festivals (Picture: Dave Hogan/Hogan Media/REX/Shutterstock)

Rick also reflected on the heights of his fame and how they led to him receiving some very bizarre requests…

He confessed that at one point he got so ‘ridiculously’ well-known that he was asked to sign a bible for two nuns when visiting the Italian Alps.

‘I just thought, “Ok, fine. I’m not sure what’s going on here but that’s just silly.”‘ the icon revealed.

‘I signed the first page, but it just made me just think, “Ok, that’s what happens when you become like… famous”.’

Nowadays, Rick embraces fame, especially as he’s able to go about his day-to-day life.

Chatting to Claudia Winkleman on her BBC Radio 2 show in 2022, Rick joked about Rickrolling and how the meme has ‘rekindled some interest in that song and obviously that haircut’.

‘I can’t explain it to you, it’s really weird,’ he admitted.

‘It’s like a double-life, doesn’t mean anything when I got down to the local coffee shop.’

Rick – photographed here in 1987 – hasn’t always found fame easy (Picture: Michael Putland/Getty Images)

Being a superstar hasn’t always come naturally to Rick, though.

Chatting on Channel 5’s Stock Aitken Waterman: Legends of Pop Music, he previously shared that he decided to quit showbiz for good in the 1990s because he ‘didn’t want to do any of it’ anymore.

‘I don’t think being a pop star is a very natural thing for anybody but some people, some people manage to do it and some people are born to do it perhaps,’ he mused.

‘I don’t think I was really. I had developed a fear of flying, I didn’t want to go and promote records. I didn’t want to do any of it, really.

‘I was super lucky that I had a massive amount of success in a very short period of time, somebody gave me a truckload of money for it and I could say, “Ok, I’m done!”‘

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