Penny Lancaster, 53, reveals how she made a pact with husband Rod Stewart, 79, to ‘never spend more than ten days apart’ as the couple clash over plans to move back to the UK

Rod Stewart and Penny Lancaster once made a pact to ‘never be apart for more than 10 days.’

The couple are said to be desperately trying to put an end to their 17-year marriage after the singer scrapped their plans to sell his $74 million Beverly Hills mansion and return to the UK full-time.

The 79-year-old British rocker refuses to leave LA, while Penny, 53, is furious and does not want to stay in the US, despite Rod extending his stay in Las Vegas and turning down two offers for their sprawling estate.

In a resurfaced clip from a 2017 episode of Loose Women, Penny gave an insight into long-distance relationships, telling how she and her husband once vowed never to spend too much time apart.

On the ITV programme she explained: ‘He’s still working hard, he’s not going to retire anytime soon.’

Penny continues: ‘The first year of our relationship he was in America and I was in the UK. I was still at university, so that separation was necessary.

‘I thought: if this works, then it is a very strong foundation and we can respond to it better later.

“But now that the kids are still in school and Rod is working, we’ve made a pact not to be apart for more than 10 days. The longest we’ve been apart was two weeks and we thought, ‘This is too much, we can’t do this.'”

Penny recounts their first meeting on Loose Women in 2015, telling how she was ‘dared’ by a friend to go to a concert and ask him for an autograph.

“The next day I got an invitation to photograph him at a concert, because I was in college at the time,” she said.

Rod explains: ‘I had her number and gave it to my bass player, but he kept it for six months. I had just gotten out of a relationship and he said I wasn’t ready.’

“I called her six months later.”

Penny continued, “The funny thing is, when I got to photograph him, I thought he was asking me out of the goodness of his heart. Then he called me six months later and said, ‘I’d love to see those pictures you took.'”

On Wednesday, DailyMail.com has learned that the pair are now at a ‘stalemate’, with Rod refusing to leave LA and Penny refusing to stay after he extended his stay in Las Vegas and rejected two offers for the sprawling nine-bedroom property just over a month ago.

“Rod is loving his life in LA and flying back and forth to Vegas for his performances,” a well-placed insider tells me. “He’s spending quality time with his grandchildren and hosting a banquet dinner at home for a group of his closest friends most Sunday nights.”

Rod announced plans to move to his native United Kingdom in June 2023 when he listed his 33,000-square-foot Beverly Hills home – which also includes a three-story guesthouse, a swimming pool and a full-size soccer field – for $70 million.

In December, he raised the asking price to $80 million, then lowered it by $6 million in February, bringing the price tag to $74 million.

But the rocker has since taken the property off the market, leaving Penny – who is a regular on British panel show Loose Women, works as a special constable for the London police and considers the British countryside her ‘home’ – furious.

“Penny has no plans to return to LA, which she is not a fan of, while Rod has no plans to move back at this time,” the insider continued.

“They’re at a stalemate and Penny is angry that Rod hasn’t kept his word. It’s about saving their marriage now.”

DailyMail.com has contacted representatives for Stewart and Lancaster for comment.

Rod, who moved to LA in 1975, paid $12 million for the land on which he built his yellow mansion in 1991, after hiring famed California architect Richard Landry.

The property features 12 bathrooms, a large formal dining room that seats over 20 guests, a speakeasy, a movie theater, a wood-paneled library, a wine room, two gyms, an eat-in kitchen, a tea room and is also currently home to his 1,500 square foot model railroad.

He confirmed his return to the UK in June last year, citing his sons’ education as one of the key factors.

“The chances of me selling it are very, very slim because I love it so much I won’t sell it if I don’t get the right price for it,” he told Chris Evans on Virgin Radio.

“I love Los Angeles and the American people have been very good to me, but it’s time to leave. My two boys, [17] and 12, go to school here [UK].

The Grammy winner had planned to make his palatial Essex estate, known as Durrington House, his permanent residence. He and Lancaster bought the 10-bedroom, 18th-century property in 2016.