Pink Floyd’s Gilmour hangs up guitar at 70

THE Rolling Stones are still cavorting on stage around the world, despite their combined age of 289.

Meanwhile, The Beatles’ septuagenarians Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are equally determined to prolong their careers. There is, however, one music icon who refuses to join the wrinkly rocker set: Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, whom, I can reveal, has decided to retire from the stage after more than half a century.

‘I have finished touring and I’m now in retirement, and very happily so,’ Gilmour tells me. ‘I’m 70 and you just can’t do this sort of thing for ever.’

His decision comes just weeks after finishing his year- long tour in September, to support his fourth solo album, Rattle That Lock. Grossing an eye-popping £37 million, it was his longest solo tour to date and spanned several continents.

But it’s unlikely that money would be a primary concern for the Brightonbased rocker, who is worth £100 million and was, this year, ranked 25th on the Sunday Times Rich List.

‘From here on out, I plan to be happy and enjoy life,’ he adds, making it clear he has no plans to turn his colourful life and career into a moneymaking venture. ‘I doubt I’d ever write a memoir because I just can’t be a***d, actually.’

He could always get his glamorous novelist wife to write it. Polly Samson, 54, is his second spouse after his 15-year marriage to American-born model and artist Virginia ‘Ginger’ Hasenbein ended in 1990.

Gilmour and Samson have four children together, including Gilmour’s adopted son Charlie, who was given a 16-month prison sentence in 2011 after swinging from a Union Jack flag on the Cenotaph in London during a student demonstration.

Gilmour’s final performance for his last tour was at the Royal Albert Hall in September, where he surprised fans by inviting Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch on stage to perform Comfortably Numb.

Gilmour tells me: ‘I asked him a few days before, and he said “yes”. I hadn’t done it with him before, but I’d asked others. They didn’t all agree to it! I won’t name names, though.’