Penny Lancaster gave bad boy Rod Stewart an ultimatum

Lady Penny Lancaster-Stewart almost gave husband Sir Rod Stewart the boot at the start of their relationship because he was "playing games".

The statuesque blonde began dating the rock legend back in 1999 shortly after he split from his second wife Rachel, and has revealed she almost dumped him after he tried to hide the fact he was photographed with another woman, who made out was a friend of his daughter.

Appearing on UK TV show ‘Loose Women’ on Thursday (05.25.17), 46-year-old Penny said: "When I first met him, he was still playing games. He’d just come out of his marriage, he was playing games. I didn’t want to be a girlfriend, I wanted to be THE girlfriend. I told him right from the start … I made the rules. I remember finding a photograph of him and another woman and he said, ‘Oh it’s a friend of my daughters’, but I walked."

However, the ‘Sailing’ hitmaker thought he was going to lose Penny and soon started telling the truth after she walked away.

She added: "He panicked, and then he came back and he started explaining himself."

Penny – who has two sons, Alastair, 10, and five-year-old Aiden, with Penny, and six other children with several different women – insists that the 72-year-old rocker quickly got his boyish ways out of his "system" and the pair have never been stronger.

She laughed: "He’d got it out of his system, his percentage and qualities are balanced now."

Talking what she likes about the music icon, she spilled: "What charmed me about Rod was not only that he is a multi-faceted character where he is the cheeky chappy or naughty schoolboy but he also has this steely side to him. He works out regularly, he’s very strong so I find him very sexy."