Model, rock star wife, cop, now author - how Penny Lancaster found her voice
In her honest, funny and brave autobiography, the Loose Women panellist reveals how she found the courage to speak out.
Penny Lancaster is so much more than Rod Stewart’s wife. This is apparent from the first pages of her autobiography Someone Like Me, which dives into her life story with a vivid retelling of an attack by a man who pounced when she was walking to school aged 12.
Compounding an attempted abduction when she was five and a sexual assault as a 17-year old model, the experience prompted a panic attack years later on a charity walk and started a process of taking back control and finding her voice.
“So much of what happened in my life comes back to this moment,” she writes in the honest, emotional and funny memoir that tracks her journey from Essex schoolgirl to rock star wife and which she will be discussing in her first Scottish book festival appearance on the opening night of the Boswell Book Festival at Dumfries House in Ayrshire on Friday.
Peppered with rock stars, royalty and glitz, Someone Like Me is also an honest and brave retelling of the less glamorous aspects of Lancaster’s life. Bullying, dyslexia, sexual assault, IVF, menopause, depression, are laid bare, along with her rebirth as a police ‘special’, volunteering alongside regular officers and role as a Loose Women panellist since 2014. She discusses campaigning for dyslexia, anti-bullying, menopause and women’s health issues and joining Queen Camilla on tackling violence against women.
Lancaster is excited about the appearance, where she will join authors such as Gordon Buchanan, Michael Morpurgo, Nicola Sturgeon and Sally Magnusson, with her book festival and audience experience.
“I'm pretty good at wearing my heart on my sleeve and sharing,” she says on a video call from Essex home. (She’s still Penny from Essex, daughter of a secretary and a lawyer and bullied for her height and undiagnosed until her forties dyslexia, but these days her home is the multi-roomed Durrington House, her husband is a rock star and holidays are in Palm Beach not Southend-on-Sea.)
“My parents sometimes cringe and say ‘why do you have to tell people that?’ about menopause or IVF, but it's a normal process of life,” she says. “When you're going through awkward times you feel alone but if you connect and share your story you realise people are going through a similar thing and it removes the pressure and stigma.”
“That's why I wanted to write the book, to share my experiences and help others going through similar things. Talking to audiences and sharing stories off the page face to face is an even nicer experience.”
Lancaster doesn’t hold back writing about her life, the good times and the bad. There’s modelling glamour and behind the scenes family life with Rod Stewart (who is often to be heard saying ‘you wouldn’t catch Elton John doing this’ around the house, tidying away items such as Penny’s childhood swimming medals in his crusade against clutter, or relaxing with his model railway) - and the harder times are there too.
“It was important for me to share it all. What's the point of doing a book like that if you're not going to be completely honest and open?”
Written in dyslexia friendly fonts customised by Lancaster, she’s also open about having the help of ghost writer, Helena Drakakis.
“The sexual assaults were the hardest things to unravel,” she says. “When I was on Loose Women and talking about the #MeToo movement I felt it was a responsibility of mine, especially as a police officer where we're trying to encourage people to come forward.
“As personal as some of those stories are, if you can dig deep enough and share them it can help so many others. When I was a victim of sexual assaults, there was no justice, no-one was prosecuted, and it's my turn now to help others get their justice. So it is a healing process in the end.”
Lancaster applied the same straight talking embarking on a relationship with Stewart who was 26 years older and had a reputation as a womaniser when they met. However, she’s also a diplomat - necessary when your husband has eight children with five different mothers - and her blended family is something of which she is very proud.
“I have to be honest, that's just the way I am,” she says. “I can't pussyfoot around things or pretend they aren't happening. But I don't force and demand. I do it gently, then people are more susceptible and understanding.”
When Lancaster is recognised in public, the most common question is how she and Stewart keep their relationship alive, and for her retaining individuality is key.
“We have different styles of relationship from month to month. There's one period where Rod and I are on top of each other and it's really intense, then others where Rod’s touring, like at the moment, and we communicate by phone and email. That’s when I jump into a single parent role. I’m very proud to be Rod’s wife and a mother but I’'m also able to spread my wings, have my career and independence and live in my skin and space. I think that helps us a lot. It's not predictable.
“Obviously we have help, so we've been fortunate. But I don't really know what it is.
“Maybe it's because we met each other in later stages of our lives and gone through various relationship experiences. I guess finding a girl with the same desires and similar upbringing was an important connection.
“Also I am very good at talking and getting things off my chest. I'm a good communicator with Rod and he has learnt over the years to be a better listener and to better understand people around him. In his career it is all about Rod and there are a lot of yes people. But he has learnt to understand other's points of view. So communication is a big part, and learning. Rod is extremely good, after a little time to think, at apologising. We all need to not feel we've failed if we've been wrong. It's OK, and we pick up the pieces and apologise and learn from that, move on. It's realising it's never too late to learn and change.”
When she’s not being recognised it’s because she’s working as a police ‘special’ alongside regular officers on the beat, after appearing in a TV series in 2020 that saw her qualify and sign up, and she has come to revel in her ‘disguise’.
“If I put my uniform on, nobody knows it's me,” she says.
It’s telling that a woman who has been photographed since she was a teenager is most thrilled with a shot of her from the behind in her uniform, anonymous, blonde hair in a bun peeking out under her hat, shielding visitors on the streets of London during an Extinction Rebellion protest at the Lord Mayor’s Show in 2021.
“It’s been extremely rewarding, keeps me very grounded and because I'm on foot patrol I'm face to face with the public. I like talking to people and using my life skills as a woman of 55 and a mother. I can empathise. People think it's chasing suspects and arrests, and there is that, but a lot of the time it's dealing with vulnerable people and victims. And because I've been vulnerable and a victim, I feel I have a lot to offer.”
Penny Lancaster appears at Boswell Book Festival, Dumfries House, Ayrshire, on Friday [8 May] at 7.30pm. Watch online and catch up available, £5.
Want the latest Scottish headlines sent directly to your phone? Sign up to our WhatsApp Channel https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbAYDQtDOQIe5zlwiu1o
Someone Like Me, by Penny Lancaster is published by Bloomsbury Publishing, hardback £18, paperback £9.89, ebook £8.79, Audiobook £8.
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.