'One day Rod'll be hanging around the college gates trying to get a

ALANA Hamilton lets out a playful laugh. "Pretty soon Rod will be hanging out at the college gates looking for dates." She is making the kind of cheeky comment about blonde-loving serial monogomist Rod Stewart that only an ex-wife can.

"Personally, I don't get it. I would think he should find a nice woman who is at least in her forties and settle down."

So she doesn't approve of Rod's latest Leggy Blonde? "I've met Penny several times. She seems very nice."

Then she adds mischievously: "Really...I keep waiting for him to show up with a short, dark Venezuelan girlfriend."

Warming to her theme, she's on to Rod and fatherhood. "And for God's sake he shouldn't have more kids. Please...he's had enough. That's the thing about young women. Of course they want to have kids."

Suddenly she pops a chocolate into her lip-glossed mouth, smiles, and checks herself.

"But it's not my business. I've learned not to judge people. I like to live my life the way I live it and I have to let other people do the same."

Certainly her chosen lifestyle is bizarre by most people's standards. There can't be many women happy to share their precious Sundays with their ex-husband's ex-wives.

But 50-year-old Alana has become the official Rod Stewart Ex- Wives' Club hostess.

Diaries permitting, Alana, Kelly Emberg and Rachel Hunter spend Sundays around her dining room table and talk kids, careers and men. Sometimes Rod will be there, other times he'll just be a topic of conversation.

"We get on great," Alana smiles. "Rod's the only one we fight with.

"We have Sunday night dinners - we call it the extended dysfunctional family dinner. Rachel comes over with the kids and her sister Jackie and we have Kelly and her daughter Ruby and all of my kids and a few friends. When he's in town, Rod sometimes comes."

From the glowing way she speaks of Penny, she'll be happy to invite her along to meet the gals. Though she admits doesn't actually know if marriage is imminent.

"Rod doesn't call and chat with me about his personal life. He doesn't check in with me," she says - and she can't resist another quip. "Maybe he should, I could probably give him some good advice!"

The beautiful Alana is perched on her comfy chocolate-coloured sofa, surrounded by the mementoes of a marriage to one of the world's most famous singers.

Her home is modest. While her husband inhabits a gaudy ornately- decorated mansion down the road, she lives in a simple open-plan two- bedroom house.

She says she's not jealous of Rod's lifestyle, she would "rather live in somewhere cosy and homely and warm and comfortable and not too big.

"I don't live the same lifestyle that Rod does because I can't afford it and because I don't really want to."

But you have to wonder. She admits if she'd fought for a bigger divorce settle-ment her financial situation might be different: "I have never discussed the terms of my divorce settlementbut believe me, compared to whatI could have asked for Igot very, very, very little.I can honestly say that. I probably was foolish, looking back and I don't know if Rod has ever realised it or fully appreciated it. I always thought I was being a good, decent person who didn't want people to think I was taking advantage. I've got a lot of Texan pride. I don't want anything from anyone that they don't want to give me."

This "Texan pride" and the Scottish reputation for meanness made for a very modest divorce settlement.

"I just didn't want hard feelings and bad blood although we have had our share of misunderstandings and, from time to time, we still do. We don't always agree about things to do with our kids, but usually we can talk things through."

So does Alana deserve the kind of apology he gave to Kelly Emberg - the model he left for after five years of marriage - for his womanising?

"He probably needs to apologise to every woman he's ever known - he's got a long list of apologies, I'm sure."

"When Rod and I first broke up and she and Rod were going together there was certainly no love lost, but Kelly's a nice person. She really doesn't have a mean bone in her body. I really like Kelly a lot. I get along well with Rachel as well."

He might not have made the most permanent husband, but his record on the fatherhood front is better.

He accuses Alana of being "too soft" on the children - Ashley, 26, her son with first husband George Hamilton; and model Kimberley, 21, and Sean, 20, her children with Rod. "I think growing up I wasn't the more relaxed parent because I had the responsibility of raising them. I was the one who was always there and had to take care of them and show up for school meetings.

"I think I'm more accepting and understanding and compassionate as a parent. Rod sometimes accuses me of being too soft and maybe I am. But I accept my kids the way they are.

"I don't have some idea of perfection that they should fit into some certain mould."

Rod and Alana had high hopes that their children would want to go to college. Sadly they didn't. Kimberley this week stalked down the catwalk in a punk inspired Stars and Stripes dress slashed to the navel. Then there was the tastefully naked pose for a magazine. Don't they worry she's doing too much too young?

"I didn't want the kids to start modelling at 14, although Kimberley started doing a few things when she was 16. But they are going to do what they want to do.

"Kimberley's very strong-willed, she has very strong opinions and she's very independent. She is a bit of a rebel. She is a non- conformist. I think I was the same. I never wanted to do what people thought you should. I always hated that. I've always been a bit of a rebel.

"She did some pretty shots for a magazine. They weren't graphic at all. I did the same thing when I was her age. Rod doesn't get bent out of shape over things like that.

"She has a strong sense of herself - she doesn't want to be thought of as somebody's daughter. Of course, it's a cross that she has to bear. Kate Hudson was Goldie Hawn's daughter but now she has made her own name. I think Kimberley's in the process of doing that."

As well as modelling, Kimberley is taking courses at Santa Monica College now in child psychology.

"I think she's more interested in acting in the long term. She's done a television pilot and a few months ago she had a part in a movie."

Alana has already had a lot to deal with as a parent. Her eldest son Ashley became a drug addict as a teenager - although he has recovered and made a film with his father, George Hamilton. "He's doing really well and I'm very proud of him. I'm so proud of all my kids and the paths they have now chosen.

"I don't think it's easy to grow up in this town in the circumstances they have had, with divorce and a family that isn't the most normal, family around.

But they are all really good kids with good hearts and values.

"Sean hasan interest in acting and the music business but he is still trying to find what he wants to do.It's taking him a bit longer than the other kids.

"He's taking some computer courses. He had a job at a recording studio for a while running errands. He's really a sweetheart.

"Sometimes I look at him in a certain way and he looks exactly like his father when Rod was young. He's the spitting image."

Although, she confesses, that might not necessarily be a good thing.

"When I first met Rod I thought he was downright weird-looking. But obviously, he grew on me!" she jokes.

It's hard to see how - despite co-hosting a talk show with George Hamilton and her new Los Angeles play about a woman with big hair, big breasts and a low IQ (catchily called C Cup) - she will never completely emerge from the shadow of her exes.

"To this day I get called Rod Stewart or George Hamilton's ex- wife and it just drives me crazy. I don't want to be constantly identified with the two men I was married to.

"I had a career before them and I was quite successful on my own and I'm still doing OK. I just happened to marry two men who were very high-profile and I can't escape it."

There are no men on the horizon and she hasn't really fallen for anyone the way she did with Rod.

"I'm not dating anyone special. There's nothing really serious.

"I would love to meet someone and be in a relationship but my friends tell me I'm too picky. But I think it's just that when you meet the right person you know it.

"I either have to be madly and passionately in love or else I'd rather be alone.

"I'd rather be reading or cooking or with my dogs than sitting making small talk on a date with someone I'm not particularly interested in."

It seems strange there has been no one significant since Rod. After all she is pretty and slim. Even Joan Collins has asked her how she got such a "tight butt" - leg lifts while she is doing her teeth, apparently.

She had breast implants for 10 years, but "I got them because I had had three kids and I felt I'd be more proportioned.

"I do not get these women who look like they are all plastic. I see these actresses and their lips are three times the size they are normally. It looks like a bee stung their mouths."

While her 56-year-old ex has no qualms about dating a 29-year-old woman, 50-year-old Alana is not keen on the age gap idea.

"Most men my age are looking for 25 years old and the men who are interested in me seem to be younger men.

"I have friends who say to me, 'You should be married to a nice man and have a nice secure life and I suppose I could be if I really wanted it.

But there is a part of me that doesn't want that life. I never wanted to be the Hollywood wife."

Now - unavoidably - she is more famous for being the Hollywood Ex Wife. And being the keeper of the secrets of all the women Rod Stewart has loved and doesn't want to leave behind. And being the dispenser of homespun wisdom to a rocker who will never learn.

"I said to Rod a long time ago, 'Women come and go in your life but children don't.

"Your children are there forever and that's not always true with a woman, as we've seen..."

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