Paddy McGuinness gets emotional in his family's new documentary about his and wife Christine McGuinness' three autistic children.
Paddy and Christine McGuinness get emotional about their kids in a new documentary
The ‘Top Gear’ host tells all about “what gets to him" in the new BBC One film, ‘Paddy and Christine McGuinness: Our Family and Autism’, in which he contemplates if his three kids - eight-year-old twins Leo and Penelope, and five-year-old Felicity - will ever comprehend the depth of his love for them.
While holding back tears, the 48-year-old funnyman says: “What gets to me with them all, and it’s only how I think, I think, ‘Will they ever know how loved they are? Do they understand what love is?'
“When I’m with Leo every night in bed I will say to him, ‘Who loves you more than anything in the world?’. He’ll say, ‘You do’. Then I’ll go, ‘Do you love Daddy?’ and he’ll go, ‘Yeah’. But I think to myself, ‘Is he just saying that, or does he know that?’ ”
The one-off programme - which airs tonight (01.12.21) - will explore the challenges involved with raising kids with the condition.
Last month, Christine went public with her own autism diagnosis.
In the programme, the 33-year-old model touches upon how “exhausting” she finds living with the disability, but she insists people with autism are “not a hindrance”.
The former ‘Real Housewives of Cheshire’ star says: “It’s just exhausting. I feel like I’m a pain. I don’t mean to be but I feel like a hindrance and I don’t want my children to ever feel like that.
"Being a parent of kids with autism is challenging and difficult at times but they are not a hindrance. These children are wanted and loved.”
In the show, Christine also opens up about feeling as if she has “faked a lifetime”.
She tells expert Sir Simon Baron-Cohen: “I feel like I faked a lifetime. Everything I do and everywhere I go, I tend to mirror people.”
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