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Penny Lancaster opens up about her secret ‘learning disability’

The star has been diagnosed with dyslexia at 46

Former model Penny Lancaster has revealed she’s just been diagnosed with dyslexia, confirming something she’s always suspected.

Rod Stewart’s wife of ten years revealed on Loose Women how she’s always believed she suffered from the condition and had her suspicions confirmed recently after getting tested.

She says rocker Rod, famed for hits like Maggie May and Do Ya Think I’m Sexy, gave her the confidence to face up to it.

Penny confessed: “I’m dyslexic – something I’ve always known and kept secret until I recently got diagnosed.

“Rod has never made me feel in any way like I can’t do things. I was asked to read a pledge at a charity event. I was in a panic but he said ‘Go on Pen, you can do it’.

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“I could hear him cheering for me and I read out the words. I didn’t get them all right but I read them and I felt like bursting into tears afterwards because it was such a big deal for me.”

Penny has hinted that she had dyslexia in the past, saying reading aloud was always terrifying to her because she had ‘borderline dyslexia’.

She also spoke publicly about how a tutor giving her extra English lessons outside school asked her shocked dad ‘Why bother, she’ll never amount to anything?’.

How wrong he was.

Leggy Penny, a 6ft 1 inch former model, is now a talented photographer, TV presenter, mother of two young boys and last year she and Rod, 73, renewed their wedding vows.

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She’s also been commended and hailed as a ‘role model’ on social media for sharing her new diagnosis.

Not bad for a girl not expected to ‘amount to anything’.

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