Francis Rossi has dreams about his late bandmate Rick Parfitt.

The 73-year-old rock star shot to fame as the co-founder and lead singer of Status Quo alongside Rick Parfitt - who died from sepsis at the age of 68 in 2016 - and revealed that his death has made him think about his own mortality.

He said: "Death? Yeah. I’ve had pneumonia three times, and the last one was 2017. F***, have you ever been ill and you lie there at night sometimes and think you could die in your sleep now? That was it. I’m hoping there is a time that you just go, it’s time to check out. And if it comes to a time of someone having to wipe my derriere, I’m going. I dreamed of [Rick] last night. I was supposed to be doing a vocal for a soundtrack on a movie. He said, ‘I think you should let me sing this’, well, that was Rick all over, ‘Let me, let me, let me.'"

The 'Down Down' hitmaker has reunited with his remaining bandmates Andy Bown, John Edwards, Leon Cave, and Richie Malone and went on to dispute the idea that they cannot hit the road again without Rick.

He told The Daily Mirror newspaper: "The naysayers said ‘they can’t do it without Rick... blah, blah, blah’, And they may be right for all I know. But it just makes you dig in.."

Meanwhile, Francis commented on the controversial decision to hold the World Cup in Qatar - where homosexuality is illegal - and noted that the laws are just "their laws" while acknowledging it is a "very hard" choice for fellow performers to turn down the lucrative chance to perform in the Middle East country.

He said: "It’s their laws, whether I agree with them is another matter. Whether [Qatar was awarded the rights to host the World Cup] in a bent way or not, we’re now going to say the rest of the world isn’t bent? Including our own country and our own government? Robbie [Williams] went and did that because they put a lot of zeroes in front of him. It’s very, very hard to not do it."