It\u2019s 5pm when Paddy McGuinness calls from his home in Cheshire. Surely it\u2019s teatime for his kids, eight-year-old twins Leo and Penelope and five-year-old Felicity? \u201cIt is, yes! I\u2019ve just snuck up to the bedroom with you.\u201d A beat. \u201cThat sounds wrong, but you know what I mean.\u201d Of course I do. He\u2019s the king of innuendo, as seen when he presented the ridiculously successful dating show Take Me Out, which ran on ITV for nearly a decade until 2019 and was pretty much defined by its non-stop use of double entendre.<\/p>\n

Whenever McGuinness is on the telly, he presents himself as the daft everyman, an entertainer of the masses who\u2019s equally at home hosting Question of Sport or Top Gear alongside Freddie Flintoff and Chris Harris. Even early on in Phoenix Nights (2001) alongside his childhood friend Peter Kay, he played a nightclub bouncer called Paddy who was a serial flirt. It would be easy to assume that the 48-year-old is a bit of a lad, in it for the laughs and the ladies.<\/p>\n

There is, however, a more serious side to him. In Paddy and Christine McGuinness: Our Family and Autism, he and his 33-year-old wife Christine, a former model, openly discuss their three children being diagnosed with autism. It\u2019s a candid, moving documentary in which the couple invite us into their Cheshire mansion, talk about their respective responses to the diagnosis and explore how we might all better understand autism, especially since there has been a steep increase \u2013 mainly in girls \u2013 in the number of schoolchildren diagnosed with the condition.<\/p>\n

McGuinness admits he wasn\u2019t sold on the idea of \u201csuch a personal documentary\u201d until lockdown happened and his kids had to be home-schooled \u2013 difficult for all pupils, but harder still for kids who rely on routine. \u201cOur kids regressed and it made me think about families who might be in a similar, or worse, position to us. I was struggling, so I thought if we did the documentary, other families might not feel so alone or isolated.\u201d<\/p>

For the first two years of the twins\u2019 lives, Paddy and Christine pretty much stayed at home because it was less traumatic than going anywhere. The twins\u2019 boundaries were unpredictable, their sleep fractured, their meltdowns hard to control and their development slow. The twins were diagnosed with autism at four and, later, Felicity at three.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a postcode lottery for most parents and McGuinness acknowledges that they were lucky. \u201cOne of the toughest things for parents is the wait for a diagnosis. At least then you can work out what triggers your kids. I don\u2019t want to go into too much detail about my kids, but Penelope, for example, \u2018masks\u2019 \u2013 she does her best to fit into her environment and not draw attention to herself. Christine and I are constantly on watch, making sure the kids stay calm and happy as much as possible. But in some areas of the UK, the wait for a diagnosis doesn\u2019t take weeks or months, but years. It needs to change. People need to be seen much faster.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Christine was quicker to accept the diagnosis \u2013 she also recognises many of the kids\u2019 traits in herself and scores highly on an AQ test for autism in the documentary \u2013 Paddy initially struggled. He says in the film that he saw a therapist and was diagnosed with depression. \u201cYeah,\u201d he says now. \u201cIt\u2019s all in my book.\u201d He\u2019s referring to his recently published autobiography My Lifey (a nod to the Take Me Out catchphrase \u201cNo likey, no lighty\u201d that fans will get immediately) \u2013 but it feels more like a distracting tactic than self-promotion. Is he reluctant to discuss depression? \u201cNo, but it\u2019s a tricky one. If I talk about any of these things \u2013 autism, depression, whatever \u2013 publicly, it\u2019s always because I want to help other people talk about them more openly.\u201d<\/p>\n

I think he means he doesn\u2019t want to become the poster boy for depression or autism, but if speaking up might help, he\u2019ll do it. In the film he meets Paul Scholes, who talks about his teenage son who has non-verbal autism. The former Manchester Utd player admits he too struggled after his child\u2019s diagnosis, but learnt to navigate his traits and now fully accepts and adores his son for who he is. It\u2019s still \u2013 ridiculously \u2013 unusual for two men to talk so openly about their emotions on TV.<\/p>\n