Rod Stewart has laid bare the devastating emotional toll of his failed marriage to model Rachel Hunter, revealing a raw and painful confession that still lingers decades on. Speaking ahead of his hotly anticipated Glastonbury appearance, the music icon admitted he was left so shattered by the split that he would lie on the sofa with a blanket and a hot water bottle, barely functioning. “I felt cold all the time,” he said in his autobiography, Rod: The Autobiography.

“I took to lying on the sofa in the day, with a blanket over me and holding a hot water bottle against my chest. "I knew then why they call it heartbroken: You can feel it in your heart. I was distracted, almost to the point of madness.” Rod and Rachel married in 1990 when she was just 21 and he was 45, but the relationship crumbled nine years later when she walked away, later saying she had “lost her identity” in the marriage.

The separation blindsided the singer. Now 80, Sir Rod appears to be in a more settled place, happily married to Penny Lancaster since 2007.

But speaking to the BBC’s Mark Savage at a pub near Piccadilly Circus, it’s clear that the heartbreak of the past still echoes through his reflections.

While he now prioritises family — “I’ve got eight kids all together… It’s just gorgeous,” he says. The star still opens up about the emotional costs of fame, relationships, and decades spent in the spotlight.