As pop legend’s son Sean Stewart checks into rehab… Rod may be the only man who can save the dorky but troubled guy I got to know: KATIE HIND

Sean Stewart had come straight from a SoulCycle class when I met him at the super-plush Beverly Hills Hotel. Bursting with energy after his trendy spinning session, he looked every inch the wealthy young man of leisure.

The son of pop legend Sir Rod Stewart, he was on first-name terms with many of the staff at the restaurant, where we had met for breakfast in the Los Angeles sunshine.

It was 2015 and I had come to hear all about the new clothing range Sean was set to launch with the support of his rich and famous dad – and which he had named Dirty Weekend after a track from Sir Rod’s 1978 album, Blondes Have More Fun.

But despite this venture, Sean, now 44, seemed to me be the epitome of a troubled ‘nepo baby’ – a little boy lost who could not escape the shadow of his enormously successful parent and who had ‘issues’ to go with it.

That morning, Sean proudly told me he had been sober for three years, having previously struggled with alcohol. He was determined to turn his life around with his new business – and I could not help but have a soft spot for him.

While a bit of a dork, he was kind and very funny as he cracked jokes and shared hilariously indiscreet stories about his dad – who has admitted he slept with so many women he lost count – sizing up his son’s girlfriends.

Sean revealed that Sir Rod would ‘come offstage and pick me up – and afterwards he would teach me how to destroy hotel rooms by putting chickens in them’.

In another confession, he told me: ‘Girls would take off their tops and throw their bras on the stage [when Rod was performing]. It was f****** awesome. I was like, “My dad is the coolest guy in the world.”’

Rod and Sean Stewart in Los Angeles in 2015

Sean in Beverly Hills in 2002. He recently checked into rehab

The father and son at Heathrow in 1986

I remembered that day when I was sad to learn this week that Sean recently checked himself into rehab in another attempt to deal with his addiction issues after his family had dramatically stepped in.

Currently holed up at the $80,000-a-month Cliffside Malibu treatment facility in California in a bid to once again turn around his life, he clearly has yet to finish battling his demons.

‘Sean is in rehab for addiction,’ a source said. ‘He’s had a long history of substance abuse and he decided to get help when he saw that he was falling off the deep end again. There was a family intervention because they were worried. They are all able to see when Sean is sober and when he is not.’

This will, of course, be heartbreaking for Sir Rod, 80, and his first wife Alana, Sean’s mum.

Sean is the third oldest of the singer’s eight children and Rod’s eldest son. His sister Kimberly, 45, is also daughter to Alana.

During our meeting in LA, it was clear that Sean adores his father, saying: ‘I want to get married and have kids now. The most successful thing in the world would be to be the best father – and I learned that from my dad. He is the coolest guy in the world.’

Sir Rod has a daughter Sarah, 61, with ex-girlfriend Susannah Boffey. After Alana, Rod had Ruby, 37, with ex-girlfriend Kelly Emberg before marrying Rachel Hunter in 1990 and having Renee, 32 and Liam, 30.

He then moved on to Penny Lancaster, with whom he has two teenage boys, Alastair Wallace, 19, and Aiden Patrick, 14. Despite Rod’s £200million fortune, Sean insisted to me his father had done his best to keep his huge brood as normal as possible by encouraging them to do charity work.

Like fellow troubled ‘nepo baby’ Calum Best, Sean had played football to a high standard. But that went wrong towards the end of his teens.

Of course, one day Sean will inherit a substantial sum from his father’s estate. But when I met him, there was a sense of melancholy which he seemed to me to be covering up by ‘goofing around’. There was this sadness in his eyes and he confessed, with torment etched on his face, that it had began when he was bullied at school: ‘They called me “Stupid Stewart”.’

He said that his reckless approach to life had landed him in constant trouble, including with the police.

In fact, our interview had been moved back because some weeks before he had been arrested at the airport while on his way to do volunteer work to help earthquake victims in Haiti alongside sisters Kimberly and Ruby. He had jumped on to the luggage conveyor belt ‘for a laugh’.

In 2001, he had been charged with assault after attacking a stranger, Jason Rogland, 19, in a Malibu bar. Then 22, Sean was restrained by the star of TV’s Superman, Dean Cain, who happened to be passing with his brother and was first on the scene. Sean was jailed for 90 days.

‘I was lost,’ Sean told me. ‘Everybody has hurt and pain inside them, but some people take it out on hurting themselves. I dealt with it by drinking and doing other things. My pain started when I was bullied in high school. I was a skinny little kid, I was scrawny, I was picked on, beat up, made fun of. I have OCD.’

Perhaps poignantly given his latest visit to rehab, Sean paid special tribute to his beloved father for helping him leave his troublesome past behind.

He said: ‘I don’t think I had a drug addiction and it wasn’t hard at all to stop drinking. When I got to 30, I realised that I wanted to turn my life around: I wanted to find my way and stop hurting myself. I decided to take my problems and turn them into success stories and shove those success stories down the throats of anyone who had ever doubted me.

‘I played soccer to a high standard but then I got lost. The bullying really affected my self-esteem.

‘I got a lot of love and support from my father, my mother and sister Kim. It was especially my dad; he was always sympathetic to what I went through. I’m past that alcohol and drug thing now since I was 30. It’s been over three years.’

But, clearly, sobriety was not to last – while Sean’s clothing line is long gone after it struggled
to make a profit.

Luckily for Sean, his family, who he described to me as ‘like the Brady Bunch on acid’, are still rallying around and hopeful he will make a full recovery after his stint in rehab. And it will be Sir Rod who will be key in his recovery.